


Breaking and Entering

by Luthor



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: AU, Accidental Breaking and Entering AU, F/F, overused italics, the Solano Siblings are BFFs AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:32:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: In which Luisa breaks into the wrong apartment, and Rose should really invest in some greater home security.ORLuisa’s always had a knack for getting into places that she shouldn’t. Her apartment, Rose can kind of understand. Her bed, she had expected. But, herheart? Well, that’s just rude.ORI’m gay and I like tropes and AUs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by every other one of its kind; it's really only a matter of time before I attempt to write Roisa into every popular AU that I know. 
> 
> (I just wanted to write something fun and lighthearted and a little silly. I estimate around 4/5 chapters, three of which are already written.)
> 
> Thanks always to [Ims0s0rry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ims0s0rry) who has had the pleasure of me whining about this fic, and who has been a great help with feedback and proofreading. <3

Luisa returns to Miami in the wake of a tropical storm.

She steps out the back of a cab onto sun-scorched sidewalk with a modest suitcase on wheels, and draws the sunglasses down from atop her head, where they’d been keeping her hair pinned away from her face. It’s been almost a year since she was last here, and yet when a sea-salt breeze tugs at the hem of her dress, as warm and familiar as a past lover, Luisa feels as though she could close her eyes and convince herself that she’d never left.

When she opens them again, it’s to the pinks of a semi-overcast sunset and an imposing beach-front apartment block that reflects the light like a bottle washed up from the sea. Luisa cranes her neck back to get a better view of the place, and grins. She crosses the road with a raised hand to the car that stops to let her pass, and fishes her phone out from her purse.

She stops at the apartment’s front door, turns so that it’s to her back, and snaps a quick peace-sign selfie with the building in view behind her. Lowering her phone again, she shoots a quick text off to Rafael with the picture attached. ‘ _let me in before i pass out_.’ Her phone starts ringing less than five seconds later, and Luisa answers with a smile.

“Surprise!”

“ _Luisa_ ,” Rafael begins, and even over the phone she can imagine the expression on his face, “ _I didn’t think you were due for another week?_ ”

“Oh, I wasn’t, but I was lying on a black sand beach one day in Kehena, drinking virgin mojitos with a twenty-something-year-old fire eater, and I thought to myself, _what the hell am I doing_?” She laughs, winding a strand of hair around her finger. “So, I booked the next flight home, and here I am. Exhausted, by the way, so if you can buzz me up—”

Rafael makes a stammering noise. “ _I wasn’t expecting you_ ,” he says, and Luisa rolls her eyes.

“Wow, Raf, it’s been ten and a half months and you’re pissed that I got impatient to see you again?”

“ _No, that’s—_ ”

“I really missed you, too.”

“ _Of_ course, _I’ve missed you, Luisa._ ” His sigh is heavy, even over the tinny speaker in her phone. “ _I’m just not home at the moment, and I haven’t— I’ve not had a proper chance to clean the place up yet, either._ ”

Luisa softens, at that.

“You don’t have to worry about that, I’m just grateful that you’re letting me stay here, even if it is your seedy bachelor pad.” She takes another quick glance up at the building while Rafael fumbles through a list of excuses. It looks like the kind of place with extortionate rent, but Luisa can’t deliver a convincing enough lecture to Rafael about being wiser with his finances, when she’s so happy that he offered to keep her for the next few weeks or so. “I really don’t want to stay at the Marbella while I’m here.”

Rafael is quiet for the next few seconds. “ _Have you talked to dad, yet?_ ”

“We said we’d do something while I’m here,” Luisa nods, keeping her voice light. “Maybe don’t tell him I’m here early, though?”

“ _He’s not mad at you, you know?_ ”

“He’s never _openly_ mad at me,” Luisa says, and it’s true. Her father’s anger is always reserved for other targets. “But, I know he’s disappointed, and that’s almost worse. I already know exactly how the conversation will go as soon as we start talking, and I don’t want to argue with him when I just got here. So, please?”

“ _Alright, I won’t say a word, but you know it’ll only make things worse when he finds out you’ve been here however long and haven’t gone to see him._ ”

“You just let me worry about that,” Luisa huffs, and she can _hear_ Rafael smirking through the line. “Seriously, though, I’m starting to feel like a creep just standing outside your apartment building. Can you come drop your keys off with me, or let me inside? I’ll entertain myself, if you can’t stay.”

 Rafael makes a noise that already tells her, _no_.

“ _I’m in the middle of a thing—a function,_ ” he says, and does sound somewhat regretful. “ _I can leave in about an hour, at the earliest, unless you want to come pick my keys up?_ ”

“Yeah, pass.” Luisa steps out of the way as a couple pass her, hand in hand. They stop in front of the apartment building’s front door and begin searching for their keys in the bottom of a purse. Luisa steps up behind them, smiling when they catch her eye. “Don’t worry about it, though, I’ll keep myself busy until you get here.”

“ _Uh, sure, okay. I’ll call you when I’m home._ ”

The couple ahead of her finally find their keys, and touch the fob to the front console. The door unlocks with a beep, and they hold it open for Luisa out of cursory politeness.

“ _¡Hasta luego!_ ” Luisa trills into her phone, and hangs up.

 

She finds Rafael’s apartment on the fifth floor, and checks the corridor twice before slipping a pin out of her hair.

Luisa has only ever seen this work in movies, but she’s jet-lag-exhausted and cruising on caffeine and airline peanuts, and she is more than willing to suspend a little belief that it could be this easy. When the lock gives with a click barely a minute later, she hollers too loudly and lets herself inside.

Luisa’s first thought, after making a mental note to speak to Rafael about his home security, is that her brother is a little shit.

With his hesitation over the line, she had expected to walk in to dirty laundry on the floor, pots in the sink, and the stale smell of the latest string of women that he’s brought here. She knows, all too well, that Rafael’s personal suite at the Marbella is only clean and tidy because somebody does the cleaning and tidying for him.

When she flicks a light on, then, and takes in the modern yet homely décor, she can’t help but smile.

Rafael’s place is nothing like she’d expected it to be.

The stark white walls and floor-to-ceiling windows, the dark granite worktops and matching black dining table, could make the apartment look as well-styled and impersonal as an advert in a Scandinavian magazine. It is softened, however, by candles and cushions, and the little signs of a life being lived here that warm the place up better than the Floridian sunshine. Luisa admires a full bookcase as she wheels her luggage across sleek wooden flooring, and the string of fashion magazines left strewn by the sofa, as if Rafael had just had someone here.

Or, and her smile broadens when she thinks it, like he’s already prepared for her arrival a week in advance— perhaps longer, given how well he’s done.

The theory becomes more and more plausible as Luisa investigates his apartment.

It’s more than just _feminine touches_ , she realises, when she finds a book by her favourite author waiting for her on the bedside table, and her favourite scented body wash in the bathroom, along with all the necessities and toiletries that she would require for her stay. The fridge is stocked with at least three of her favourite healthy snack foods, and there’s not a drop of alcohol in the entire apartment. In short, if Rafael had meant for her to feel right at home here, he’s succeeded.

The vase of red roses on the dining room table may be just a _touch_ too far, but Luisa easily forgives them.

Having fully explored the apartment, she drops her suitcase off in the bedroom and turns on the shower. She sends Rafael a quick text – ‘ _best brother in the world!!!! besos!! xxxx_ ' – before tossing her phone on the bed. When she returns to the bathroom, the mirror has fogged over and the room is thick with steam.

Luisa leaves her clothes neatly folded on the countertop.

When she steps beneath the high-pressured shower, she has zero doubt that her brother is grossly-overspending to live here, and she really can’t find it in herself to care.

 

Luisa is still in a fluffy white bathrobe when she hears a key being inserted into the front door.

She’s spent the past half hour on the sofa, half-watching a nature documentary, while picking at a small tub of humous and some celery sticks (she has neither the energy nor the appetite to make something proper). Angling herself toward the door, Luisa prepares to greet her brother with an excited smile, but it dies somewhere in her throat when she realises that it isn’t Rafael who has come to meet her.

A woman with carrot-red hair and enviable height stops in the threshold, looking at Luisa like she doesn’t know whether to apologise or scream.

She is easily one of the most beautiful women that Luisa has ever seen, and exactly her type. For one awful moment, Luisa worries that Rafael really hadn’t been expecting her arrival, after all, as he’d already had someone else staying here. She shifts to stand up, almost dropping the humous, but her own movement seems to stir something from the redhead in the doorway.

Where previously there had been surprise, the woman’s expression hardens into utter outrage.

Luisa feels it like a hot poker burning through her skin.

She leaps to her feet, hands out and ready to explain, when the woman speaks.

“What the _hell_ are you doing in my apartment?”

Even when she’s angry, the cadence of her voice is whisper-soft, but Luisa knows better than to underestimate a woman with _that look_ in her eyes. Still, she feels the natural wooden flooring all but fall out from beneath her feet at the implication of the woman’s accusation. Luisa’s relationship with her brother has done nothing but improve since she put some distance between them, or so she’d thought. It stings to think that he wouldn’t have told her about a girlfriend, never mind one who was living with him.

“It’s okay,” Luisa tells her, pacifying, as she moves around the couch. She will have words with her brother, later. “Hi, I’m Luisa, I was supposed to be staying with my brother next week but I brought my flight forward, so—”

“I don’t _care_ ,” the woman seethes, eyes bulging, “who you are or what your vacation plans might be, _what_ are you doing in my apartment? More to the point, how did you get in here?” She seems to properly take Luisa in for the first time – the robe, the still-damp hair, and the scene that she’d left on the sofa behind her – and a noise of outraged incomprehension leaves her mouth. “Are you _eating my humous?_ This is unbelievable, I’m calling the police.”

“Wait!” Luisa blanches. “No, don’t call the police—! Rafael didn’t mention that I was coming?”

“Rafael? What does he have to do with this?”

“Hi, Luisa,” she points to herself, waving a hand, “his sister. Who’s staying here.” Her face falls. “He really didn’t mention I was coming, did he?”  

She is about to continue with a tirade about her brother’s manners, when Luisa sees the look of realisation on the other woman’s face. The expression comes with no relief, but a quiet, seething rage. Hard eyes and a harder jawline stare down at her, and Luisa wants to sink into the floor.

“Your brother,” the woman begins, clipped, like she’s seconds away from wringing Luisa’s neck, “doesn’t live here.”

“Wait, what?” Luisa’s face falls. “He didn’t mention that he’d moved.”

The redhead presses delicate fingers into her temple, massaging the tension point there.

“He hasn’t moved,” she says, like she’s trying very hard not to pop a blood vessel. “You just got the wrong apartment. Rafael Solano lives next door. This is 53B; your brother lives at _53A_.”

Luisa stares at her.

She is waiting for the act to drop, for the woman to burst into a jeer and laugh at her, tell her she’s been had. She wants, desperately, for the woman to tell her that she’s been had. Luisa looks from the redhead’s stony expression, down to the bathrobe that she’s wearing, and then briefly toward the couch. On the TV screen, a lioness lunges for an antelope, capturing its throat between strong jaws. When she turns back to the doorway, Luisa is ashen.

“Please, tell me you’re joking,” she whispers.

A muscle in the woman’s jaw jumps like a nervous tick.

“I am so – _so_ – sorry.”

In perfect comical timing, Luisa hears from the corridor, “hi, Rose, is everything alright?”

Rafael appears within the doorway a second later, and does a double take.

“Luisa…?”

Rose’s cheeks momentarily hollow. She closes her eyes like she’s suppressing a particularly troublesome migraine, and then turns to Rafael with a tight expression. “I believe she belongs to you?” she asks, sweeping a hand in Luisa’s general direction. Rafael looks between the two of them like he’s jumping to every conclusion but the right one. “She _let herself in_ to my apartment this evening. Please remove her before I have her arrested.”

Rafael’s head snaps to Luisa. “You broke into her apartment?”

“I thought it was yours,” Luisa cries, gesturing. “53B – _B_ – I remember because I made that B for Bottom joke with you that one time and you got really pissed at me for it.”

Rafael and Rose look at her with matching expressions. 

“Remember?” Luisa presses, and now that she thinks about it, maybe that joke hadn’t been with Rafael. “Oh, _fuck_.”

“Rose,” Rafael says, turning to her, “I am so sorry.”

Rose dismisses him with a shake of her head. “This isn’t your fault.”

“But, she’s my sister, and I _know her_ , and—”

“I’m standing right here,” Luisa hisses, but her expression sobers some when she meets Rose’s gaze. “And, I am sorry, I am so sorry. Oh, my god, I can’t believe this has happened. This isn’t something I do—I’ve _never_ broken into anywhere before, I wasn’t actually expecting it to work. By the way, you should really look into getting a house alarm or something set up, because this was just _too easy_ —”

Rose’s eyebrows arch, and Luisa cuts herself off before she can get herself into further trouble.

“You know what? That’s not the point. You’re so right to be mad – outraged, really – I am mortified and horrified by my own actions.” Her expression turns minutely pleading. “I fully understand if you want to call the cops, it is more than within your right to do so, but I promise that this was a genuine misunderstanding and I meant no harm. I’ll clean or replace everything I used, I’ll even—”

“Stop,” Rose interrupts, shaking her head. She looks at Luisa and Luisa looks pathetic; Rose doesn’t doubt that it was just a ridiculous mishap. “I believe you.” Luisa takes a breath as though to thank her, profusely, no doubt, but Rose isn’t done yet. “But, I want you to leave immediately, and if you ever break in here again—”

“I won’t,” Luisa insists, “never, I swear. I won’t even _try_.”

Rose holds her gaze for a moment longer, while Luisa squirms on the spot.

She’s beginning to wish that she was wearing more than just a ludicrously comfortable bathrobe.

“Good,” Rose says, and Luisa wonders how she can sound so soft, and so capable of murder, at the same time. “Now, get out.”

“But, my things—”

Rose silence her with a stare.

“They can wait,” Luisa agrees, nodding. She tucks the robe ever so slightly tighter around herself and tries not to shrink as she steps past Rose, into the corridor. The temperature is cooler, out here, though that may have something to do with the look that Rafael has been giving her since he first saw her.

This really isn’t the reunion she’d had in mind.

“I am so sorry, again,” she tells Rose, unable to stop herself, even as Rafael hooks a hand around her arm and tugs her backwards.

Rose closes the apartment door on her without another word.

Out in the corridor, Luisa meets her brother’s gaze and frowns.

“Please, save it,” she tells him, holding up a hand. “I almost just peed myself in front of your hot neighbour whose apartment I _just broke into_.” She rounds on her brother, suddenly, as he lets them into his apartment. “Why didn’t you just give me your address?”

“You have my address,” Rafael says, opening the door. He flicks a light on and Luisa can’t even be sorry to see the state of it; it smells like stale pizza and _man_. “If you’d have bothered to check it before you tried breaking in…”

Luisa groans. “I told you, I thought it was _yours_.”

“You shouldn’t be breaking into my place, either,” Rafael says, exasperated.

“I know,” Luisa whines, “but I’ve spent so long travelling, I just wanted to get indoors and comfortable.” Her expression falters when she next turns to him, and she bites briefly on her bottom lip. “Look, I can find a hotel, if you’d prefer…”

It is an off-hand comment that she does not mean, because she already knows how Rafael will respond. Hearing it, Rafael rolls his eyes and sighs. He shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that,” he says, just as she’d wanted— just as she’d expected. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

He presses a key into her hand, expression pointed.

“So that you don’t have to break in again,” he tells her.

“I meant it, when I said you’re best brother ever, you know?”

Rafael moves further into the apartment with a sigh.

Still by the front door, Luisa takes a moment to properly look around. Rafael’s apartment has the same floors, and walls, and windows as Rose’s. It’s almost an identical layout, even with where he’s placed his furniture, and yet there is a stark difference between the two. Namely, that she’d actually felt comfortable at Rose’s place.

“Thank you,” she says, anyway, tucking the ring of keys in to her chest. “I promise I won’t cause any more trouble while I’m here.”

Rafael shakes his head at her, but there is something of an incredulous, if fond, smile turning at his lips, now that she’s no longer at risk of being arrested for breaking and entering.

“Trouble?” he asks, and that something of a smile turns into a full-fledged smirk.  “I’d expected nothing less, since you said you were coming back.”

Luisa gets close enough to dig him in the arm.

“Dick,” she says, and then frowns. “You know what’s weird? Her apartment was full of everything I like. Like, if I had an apartment, I would want it to be exactly like that one.” At Rafael’s smirk, she continues, “I’m serious, she had everything right down to the food I eat, and the magazines I like— my favourite author, Raf, one of her books was on the bedside table, like it had just been left there waiting for me.”

“That’s… a pretty common place for people to leave books that they’re still reading?”

Luisa flicks a dismissive hand. “Exactly, that’s my point.”

Rafael blows out a breath and shakes his head. He will regret this, but he knows that Luisa isn’t about to let whatever thought she’s had go, until she shares it with him. He brings his arms out in a shrug and lets them fall back to his thighs with a quiet slap. “I’m not following,” he says, indulging her.  

Luisa turns to him, completely sober.

“I think your neighbour’s my soulmate.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small note: I'm upping the rating for safety. :)

Luisa’s knock on Rose’s door the next morning is nothing if not tentative.

Her body clock is still ticking around six hours behind her latest time zone; she had woken too early that morning, but Luisa is well-versed in the art of keeping herself busy. She casts a quick glance down at herself, making sure that she’s presentable, and rearranges the way that her hair falls against her chest before turning back to the closed door.

Rafael had mentioned that Rose was a lawyer, when she’d asked, and while Luisa can guess at a busy time schedule, she can also only hope that it’s clear for this particular Saturday morning.

As Luisa raises her hand to knock again, she hears the distinct sound of a chain unlatching and the door unlocking, and she quickly drops it. Luisa is wearing her most pleasing smile when the door opens, and it does nothing but brighten when Rose reveals herself from behind it, already dressed in a silk green blouse and a cream skirt. It’s not an outfit that you wear to sit around the house in, is the only downfall, but Luisa is distracted enough by Rose’s cleavage not to dwell too long on that.

“Luisa,” Rose says when she sees her, and Luisa stops staring.

“Hi— it’s Rose, right?” She grins. “You remembered my name.”

“I’m not likely to forget it,” Rose counters, but she isn’t smiling. “You’re back,” she says, and her gaze drops, “and you brought… gifts?”

Luisa glances down to the basket in her hands.

“It’s an apology gift basket,” she says, presenting it. Rose scrutinises over the contents, and Luisa’s grip on it falters until she has to lower it again, lest she spill the entire thing onto Rose’s feet. She doubts it would do much to ruin the impression that Rose already has of her, regardless.

“I didn’t realise they sold _sorry for breaking into your apartment by mistake_ baskets.” Rose folds her arms against her chest, but her interest is regretfully piqued. She frowns down at the basket and asks, “Is that my robe?”

“Dry-cleaned,” Luisa nods. “I put the basket together myself, see, there are shower products to make up for what I used, and hand lotion, and bits of food, you know. Humous.” She looks up at Rose with a small smile. “I just want you to know that I’m so embarrassed about what happened, and I will be on my best behaviour for the duration of my stay here.”

She would curtsey, if she knew how.

Rose regards her with a disdainful expression. “You’re staying, then?”

“For a few weeks, maybe, yeah. Just until I decide what I want to do next.”

“You don’t have a home to go back to?” Rose asks, and Luisa shifts her footing, defensive. “A job— family, _friends_?”

“Interested, are you?” Luisa asks, swallowing past her own discomfort. “I gave a lot of things up over this last year to travel, actually, so I’m kind of staying here until I figure out what my next step is. Anyway, that’s not what I came to talk to you about.” She shifts the basket for comfort. “Please, accept this— it’s too heavy for me to hold for much longer.”

Rose looks like she wants to refuse her, but Luisa has had a lifetime to perfect her puppy dog eyes and her knack for getting what she wants, and Rose is defenceless against both. She steps back with a sigh and gestures, walking inside. Luisa watches her go, the sound of her heels ricocheting off the hardwood flooring. Rose only makes it a few steps in before she turns back, realising that Luisa hasn’t followed.

“Humour me,” Luisa says, “but do I have your _explicit consent_ to enter the premises?”

Rose presses her mouth into a thin line, and Luisa almost thinks she’s pushed too far.

“Yes, you do. I suggest you get in here before I change my mind.”

Luisa does not have to be told twice.

She closes the apartment door behind her with her foot, and brings the gift basket toward the breakfast bar. Rose’s apartment looks softer in the morning light, and just as inviting as it had the night before. Luisa places the basket down with a dull thud beside an empty plate, a half-filled glass of orange juice, and a bowl of blueberries. She pops a berry past her lips as she looks around, while Rose places a coffee mug in her sink to wash later.

“Your apartment is really beautiful, by the way,” Luisa says, leaning her back against the breakfast bar.

She spots Rose watching her from the sink, before the redhead shakes herself and nears. While she’s in heels, and Luisa a pair of tennis shoes (sending Rafael out shopping last night for new clothes had been an insightful experience), Rose towers over her and Luisa can’t help but vibrate with intimidation – and just a _little_ excitement.

“Thank you,” Rose says, and begins unpacking the basket.

Luisa, standing perhaps a touch too close, openly admires her.

“I take it you have plans today?” Luisa asks, because she’s never been very good at keeping quiet.

“I do.”

“Anything exciting?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, when will you be free?”

Rose regards her, frowning. “Why do you want to know?”

When Luisa only shrugs, Rose returns to the basket with a sigh. She would be content to continue her unpacking in silence, when she comes across a book that’s been tucked in between a box of expensive chocolates and a novelty rose-themed candle, almost as though it had been hidden there. Luisa watches her draw the book out with interest.

“What’s this?” she asks, turning to Luisa.

Luisa is so good at sarcastic replies, at giving stupid answers to stupid questions, but she bites her tongue, now.

“My favourite author,” she says, instead, turning so that she’s properly facing Rose. “I noticed that you were reading one of her other novels—actually, that’s really why I was so sure that I was in the right place, last night. I thought Rafael had left it out for me, ‘cause I did not shut up about this book when I first read it.”

She’s smiling as she talks about it, the fondness coming off her like heatwaves, and Rose’s expression softens.

“Have you read this one, yet?” Luisa asks, and Rose shakes her head. “Well, you have to, now. I’m sure you’ll love it. We’ve really got too much in common for you not to.”

That seems to snap Rose out from the involuntary little smile on her face.

“Really?” she asks, blinking, like it’s so hard to believe.

Luisa nods her head.

“And, if you were interested,” she says, lowering her voice and stepping almost imperceptibly closer; her gaze drops purposefully toward Rose’s lips, and Rose parts them like she’s being compelled to, “you can ask me more questions about that over dinner. Tonight, maybe? I’d like to _properly_ apologise for putting you out, last night, and thank you for not having me arrested.”

Rose opens and closes her mouth.

“You don’t have to do that,” she says, but her gaze is caught on Luisa’s smiling mouth, and she sounds breathless.

“I’d really like to, though.”

Rose swallows thickly. She leans closer to Luisa as though she’s unaware of what she’s doing.

“Oh, okay.”

Luisa steps back and her voice returns to its regular chipper tone when she asks, “So, tonight?”

Rose blinks, trying to make sense of what just happened. She looks at Luisa and she doesn’t know whether to be impressed, or annoyed. Her cheeks are faintly flushed behind her makeup, and her eyes are wide and a touch too dilated for the room’s morning-brightness. Still, she nods at Luisa and flicks a strand of red hair over her shoulder.

“I’ll be available at eight,” she says, and Luisa’s grin broadens. “You can pick me up here.”

“Good,” Luisa agrees, and Rose clears her throat.

“I left your things by the door.”

Rose gestures towards them, and Luisa turns to see her case against the wall with her folded clothes from yesterday on top of it. She smiles and turns back to Rose, and she would love to stay and chat for longer, but Luisa recognises a dismissal when she’s shown one.

“I’ll see you at eight, then,” she tells Rose, who nods and lingers in the doorway, seeing her off. “I’ll let you know where we’re going— look out for a note being slid under your door, or something – so you have enough time to get dressed.”

Rose looks down at her blouse. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Luisa promises, momentarily distracted by Rose’s cleavage, again. “But, you’ll want to change, for where I’m taking you.”

 

 

Luisa had meant to drag out and enjoy her first week in Miami before she came back to the Marbella, but Rafael’s words from the night before have been niggling away at her.

That, and Luisa needs an Emilio Solano sized favour.

The Marbella has changed very little in the time since she was last here. Luisa recognises few staff members by faces if not by their names, and those that she doesn’t recognise could as easily be new or old employees, for all that she’d know them. Still, the hotel employees know _her_ , and after a few double-takes she even receives a few nods or smiles in passing greeting.

When she steps up to the front desk, before she can even get a word out, the receptionist there asks, “Would you like your usual suite, Miss Alver?”

“Not today, thanks. Can you let my brother know that I’m here?”

“Of course.”

Luisa taps the desk with a grin, and steps away.

The lobby is bustling the way that it typically is at this time, and Luisa can hear music coming from one of the many function rooms, playing for one event or another. She pays it little interest as she crosses the lobby and stops in an open entrance to the gardens. The pool is within easy view in the distance, despite the number of people already seated around its edges, and the beach way beyond that.

It had been a strange and unforgiving experience, living in a place that was always public, a place that always felt impermanent, like they’d eventually have to check out and go _home_ -home. It has made Luisa well-adjusted for the kind of travelling that she’s been doing, over the last year, although the idea of putting down more permanent roots certainly has its appeal.

“Lu, is that you?”

Luisa turns with an easy smile for Rafael, and it brightens when she sees her father alongside him.

Their relationship is a strained one (Luisa doesn’t know anyone who has a relationship with her father that _isn’t_ strained), but distance has softened the old aches and pains of it, has sanded down the rough edges that living together had rubbed red raw. Luisa is happy to see him, and Emilio’s own smile is not restrained. He opens his arms out to her and Luisa does not hesitate to fill them.

“ _Daddy_.”

“I missed you,” Emilio says into her hair. He draws back to look at her. “You look well. We weren’t expecting you for another week or so, though.”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Consider us surprised,” Rafael interjects, and Luisa rolls her eyes at him.

“What are you doing at the Marbella, Luisa?” Emilio asks, as the three of them move further into the lobby. “Your old suite can be made up for you, if you need it.”

“No, but thank you, I think it’s best if I stay at Raf’s place.” Luisa looks at her father, gauging his reaction. “I’m gonna have a full, busy schedule catching up with everyone, so you probably wouldn’t see me, anyway.”

It’s a lie, and not a very convincing one. Luisa had purposefully dropped contact with too many friends due to their _lifestyle differences_ , and others had simply been claimed by the ether that was almost a year of sketchy contact and little effort, largely on her part. She isn’t sorry to see half of them go, not really. Emilio accepts the lie with little other than a nod and a tight frown.

“And, what are your plans after that?” he asks, and Luisa barely contains a sigh.

She can see it on his face, the probing, the _expectation_ , the disapproval.

Emilio had not agreed with her when she’d told him that she needed to get away, for her own good. Luisa doubts she could convince him of it, if she had all the time in the world.

“I’m still working on those,” Luisa tells him, and barrels quickly ahead, not giving her father a chance to derail their reunion into exactly what she had been hoping to avoid. “I’d really like to spend the afternoon with you, though, if you’re not too busy?”

The creases in the corners of Emilio’s eyes deepen.

“Just lunch, then?” Luisa presses, turning to Rafael now, too. “It’s been almost a year since I last saw you both in person, _come on_. You owe me at least a lunch, now that I’m back.”

Rafael shares a look with his father, eyebrows raised.

“Lunch,” Emilio agrees. “You decide on the place, then, I need to make a few calls.”

He dismisses himself while drawing his phone out from an inner-jacket pocket. Rafael steps up beside Luisa and they watch him go.

“I didn’t think you’d be back here so soon,” he says.

“Yeah, well, you were right, weren’t you?”

Rafael does a double take. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Don’t gloat,” Luisa groans. “I couldn’t avoid him forever, and I didn’t really want to. Besides, he’d only have more to say about me leaving in the first place, if he knew I’d been here a whole week or so without telling him.” She looks to Rafael, who is still frowning at her, something of a knowing smirk on his lips. “What?”

“You want something from him, don’t you?”

“Really— that’s why you think I came here?” Luisa asks. She turns away when Rafael only arches an eyebrow, smile widening. She’s never been very good at keeping her own secrets close to her chest. “Okay, fine. I need dinner reservations for tonight, and dad’s the only person I know who could sway them. Happy?”

“Kinda,” Rafael shrugs. “What do you need reservations for?”

Luisa’s expression falls into a truly terrible impression of mock-coy. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face about this, even if she were trying. She toys with a piece of her own hair, winding it around a finger, then letting it unravel like a perfect ringlet.

“I’m having dinner with Rose tonight, if you must know.”

“Wait, my neighbour Rose? Rose whose apartment you broke into yesterday?” Rafael scoffs. “You’re lying.”

“I am not.” Luisa shakes her head, smile smug. “It’s my way of properly apologising to her.”

“What, your gift basket didn’t go down well?”

“Actually, she _loved_ that.”

“Ah-huh, sure.”

“This is just,” Luisa looks around, shrugging her shoulders, “a little extra, you know? For the inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience,” Rafael nods, unconvinced. “ _Right_.” He looks at his sister, torn between being impressed and in complete disbelief. “Lu, don’t get me wrong, you’re my sister and I love you, but don’t you think you’re aiming a little too high there?” When Luisa’s expression drops, Rafael hurries to continue, “I just mean, you _broke into her apartment_ , you know? You’re not her most favourite person in the world right now. Why don’t you just leave her be, let her temper cool?”

“You think she’s out of my league, don’t you?” Luisa scoffs. “Wow.”

“It’s not _that_ —!”

“Right, then what? Because you’re starting to remind me of high-school Rafael, who used to beg me not to hit on the girls he liked.”

“That— alright, firstly, it wasn’t like that. Secondly, I thought you had some kind of moral code about hitting on straight women?”

Luisa interrupts their argument to laugh. _Loudly_.

“Oh, Raf,” she says, all mock-sympathy and a disbelieving smile. “Rose is gay. Or, she likes women, anyway.”

“Not every woman you’re attracted to is going to be attracted to you, Luisa. That’s just a fact of life. Most of us accept this in high school.”

“I’m serious,” Luisa laughs. “Trust me, I’ve been in her apartment, I’ve seen her bookcase, I know what I’m talking about. That girl is _gay_.”

Rafael’s smile falters. He looks like he’s re-evaluating every brief encounter that he’s ever had with his neighbour— every unsuccessful attempt to hit on her.

“Oh, my god,” he mutters, distant. “That makes so much sense, actually.”

Luisa pats his shoulder, her smile knowing.

“What’s that you were saying about not everyone being attracted to you…?”

Rafael shakes himself from his thoughts. “I don’t know how happy I am about you trying to get into bed with my neighbour,” he says.

“Really, that’s none of your concern, is it?” Luisa asks. “And, who said anything about getting into bed with her? This is just dinner.”

“Right, and ‘just dinner’ is why you came back to the Marbella a week early to beg dad for a favour?”

“Exactly,” Luisa agrees.

Her smile is wicked and unconvincing.

 

 

When Rose opens the door to Luisa for the second time that day, she is bordering on doubtful and _drop dead gorgeous_.

Luisa takes in the floor length red dress with nothing short of stunned appreciation.

The fabric drapes over Rose’s body as though it had been poured over her. The vibrant colour of it is in stark contrast to her skin, although Luisa notices the tell-tale signs that Rose doesn’t spend _all_ of her time indoors, working or otherwise. Freckles have blossomed over her skin wherever the sun has touched her; a burst of them disappears into Rose’s cleavage, and Luisa has a sudden need to know just how far down they go.

“Wow, you look beautiful,” she says, remembering herself, although Rose looks just as tongue-tied. Luisa glances briefly down at her own dress – her mother’s side of the family had blessed her with _hips_ and _breasts_ and _thighs_ , and the little black number that she’s wearing tonight showcases her heritage perfectly. “Will I do?”

Rose swallows with visible effort.

“You know how incredible you look,” she says, and Luisa’s smile confirms it. Rose gestures her inside with a tilt of her head, and Luisa gladly follows, closing the door behind her. “So, I assumed you were joking when you told me the name of the restaurant, but now I’m second guessing myself.”

Luisa does a full-turn, taking in the apartment and how it has changed, minutely, from morning to evening.

“Terrible habit.”

Rose turns to her, dubious. “Can I ask _how_ you got a table there at such short notice?”

“Impressed? I have my connections,” Luisa shrugs, completing her turn so that she’s facing Rose. “Are you ready to leave? I have a cab waiting downstairs.”

“Yes, just one moment.”

Luisa watches as Rose finds her purse. She spritzes herself with perfume, re-applies her lipstick, and grabs her keys.

“Alright,” Rose says, “I’m ready to be impressed.”

Luisa offers her arm as they step into the corridor, and Rose slips her own through it without hesitation.

“Don’t worry,” Luisa says, smiling up at her as they enter the elevator (because even in heels Rose towers over her, statuesque). “I can be _very_ impressive, when it’s warranted.”

 

The restaurant is packed when they arrive, but true to her father’s word, a table for two with a decent view is waiting for Luisa when she gives her name at the desk. She and Rose are led towards the back of the restaurant, to a table by a slightly open window, letting in the salty sea breeze.

When asked what they would like to drink, Rose automatically orders a bottle of wine for the table.

“Actually,” Luisa says, and both Rose and their waiter turn to her. “I’d like a glass of non-alcoholic apple cider sangria.”

Rose looks at her quizzically for the briefest of moments, and then says to the waiter, “I’ll have the same, then, thank you.”

Luisa is still watching Rose after the waiter has left.

“You could have had wine, you know?” she says, once Rose has finished pouring herself a glass of water from the table. She fills Luisa’s glass up for her, too. When she meets Luisa’s gaze, there is something of a knowing look there that makes Luisa need to clear her throat. “I’m just in the mood for something sweet.”

“I don’t mind. I’m only a social drinker, but unless it’s a work-thing, I usually don’t have the time for that. Would I be overstepping any boundaries,” Rose turns suddenly hesitant, running a finger along the rim of her water glass, “if I asked how long you’ve been sober?”

Luisa blinks, but there are no stirrings of animosity or resentment at being read like an open book.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she says, “but how did you know?”

“Just a guess.” Rose wets her lips. “The look on your face when I ordered, actually. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

Luisa shrugs her shoulders. “You didn’t.”

“So, how long?” Rose presses, and Luisa’s smile settles into something small, and private, and proud.

“Five-hundred-and-seventy… _three_ days. Give or take.”

“Not that you’re counting, though?” Rose smirks.

“Hey, small victories,” Luisa laughs, but she shakes her head. “Would you believe I’m just that good with numbers?”

“Yes,” Rose answers, studying Luisa with a smile. Her _interest_ is almost palpable. “You’ve done nothing but surprise me since I met you, and I have a feeling that you’re not going to stop, either.” She turns to look at her menu, opening it to the starters and main courses, but her gaze flickers back up to Luisa’s face before she can even skim the names of the different dishes.

Across the table from her, Luisa’s eyes are sparkling.

“What?” Rose asks her, self-conscious.

“Nothing,” Luisa says, but changes her mind. “I was just going to ask how well this was going, in terms of an apology?”

Rose holds her gaze a moment before she laughs quietly and takes a sip from her water. “Well,” she says, and Luisa does not miss the way that Rose’s gaze falls from her own, down to her mouth, perhaps, and then lower still, “the night’s still young, isn’t it?” When she meets Luisa’s gaze again, there is something of a smirk playing against her lips, and Luisa cannot help but match it.

Their drinks arrive shortly after, and their meal orders are taken.

While they wait for their dishes to be served, Rose asks Luisa, “What did you mean, by the way, when you said we have some things in common?”

“Not just some things,” Luisa says, stirring the diced fruit in her sangria with a cinnamon stick. “When I was going through your apartment – thinking it was my brother’s, might I add – I was convinced that Rafael had set the place up especially for me. It felt homey, but it was more than that. You use the same or similar toiletries that I do, your fridge was full of my favourite healthy snacks, and your _bookcase_.”

Here, she stares at Rose like she’s in complete disbelief.

“You like to read,” Rose says, and it’s not a question.  

“I love to read,” Luisa agrees. “Escaping into books is the only thing that ever really keeps me out of trouble.”

“Right,” Rose hums dubiously, “you’re clearly not reading enough, then.”

Luisa bows her head, laughing.

“Maybe not,” she agrees. “Or, I’m just really good at getting myself into trouble.”

“And, out of it, apparently,” Rose adds.

“Speaking of our similarities, though, I have a theory.” Luisa looks at Rose mock-seriously, pursing her lips. “Will you allow me to test it out?”

Rose seems to be considering the offer, before she ultimately decides that she’s got nothing to lose from agreeing. She nods her head, and Luisa readjusts her posture, sitting ever so slightly straighter. Rose is given the distinct feeling of being in her doctor’s office, about to have personal questions fired at her.

“Firstly,” Luisa begins, “what’s your favourite novel?”

“I… don’t think I have one, yet,” Rose answers. “I have plenty that I’d recommend and that I’d read again, and the ones that I studied in school will probably always hold a special little place on my bookshelves, but I couldn’t name just one for a favourite. Why, what’s yours?”

“I gave it to you— _read it_.”

Rose concedes with a huff.

“How do you like your steak?”

“Rare,” Rose answers immediately.

“Same, but that’s an easy one. What’s your favourite unhealthy snack?”

“Donuts.”

“Seriously?” Luisa’s expression falters. “What kind?”

“Powdered sugar,” Rose admits, and startles when Luisa bursts out laughing far too loudly for the restaurant that they’re in.

“This is unbelievable,” she says, hand to her mouth. 

“I have a sweet tooth,” Rose shrugs, embarrassed.

“Yeah— _me too_. For powdered sugar donuts, especially.” Luisa points at herself, and her expression is bright with excitement. “They got me through the exam seasons in college.”

Across the table from her, Rose has stopped smiling and is looking at her dubiously. She circles both hands around her glass, and looks at Luisa like she’s trying to tell if she’s lying. “I don’t believe you,” she says, but even that sounds uncertain, and Rose doubts herself more when Luisa only grins and shakes her head.

“Fine, you ask me something,” she tells Rose, who sits back in her chair. “I’m telling you, this is uncanny. It was like we were destined to meet, or something.”

“Well, there’s one difference,” Rose points out. “I don’t believe in that kind of stuff.”

“Ask your questions,” Luisa says, “then we’ll see what you believe in.”

Rose’s expression hardens in the face of a challenge, but there’s a small smile on her lips, regardless.

“Very well,” she says, and her voice is as soft and smooth as silk.

 

Over the course of their dinner, Rose quizzes Luisa over her likes and dislikes, from TV to film, to fish and fruit, to chocolate, and her preferred mode of travel and travel destinations. Halfway through their meal, Rose’s surprise at their similarities ebbs to curiosity about Luisa herself. She asks Luisa about the year that she’s spent travelling, and what she plans on doing now that she’s home, and for how long she’ll be in Miami.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Luisa answers to that last question, and Rose takes a sip from her glass. “Raf won’t mind if I stay at his place for longer than I anticipated, but I don’t know if I see that happening. There’s so much to see out there, and if this past year has taught me anything, it’s that _that_ will never change. There’s always going to be something better than being stuck back here, at the Marbella.”

“You talk about the hotel like it’s inevitable that you’ll end up back there,” Rose points out. “Nobody’s making you, are they?”

“No, not really.” Luisa presses her bottom lip between her teeth, contemplative. “Well, it’s what my dad would want. He never understood why I wanted to be an OB-GYN in the first place, when I could really _apply_ myself to something better— his words.” She rolls her eyes. “He wants me to join the family business, as it is, although I don’t really understand why.”

“You’re good with numbers,” Rose suggests, “you could be a great asset.”

“True, but I have no head for business. Anyway, I’ve seen what working for him has done to Rafael, and I know it’s not for me.”

Rose nods her head at that, and pushes her food around her plate. Luisa has a tendency to overshare – to talk about herself like she’s with a close friend, somebody who wouldn’t abuse their new knowledge of her. It’s refreshing to have somebody trust her like that, if a lot to process, sometimes, and more than anything it leaves Rose curious to discover more.

“Why did you become an OB-GYN?” she asks, almost distractedly, as she returns to her meal.

Luisa is quiet as she chews her food.

“It’s silly,” she says, eventually, but Rose prompts her on with a shake of her head. “I was kind of obsessed with being a mother, when I was a kid. I wanted a little girl who was my mirror image, who I could dress up and teach new things, and I would love her unconditionally and never leave her.” She smirks at it, now, but Rose gets the sense that there’s something deeper to the story. “Well, my desire to have kids of my own pretty much disappeared when I was a teenager, but all of those feelings stuck with me, I guess.

“Childhood is sacred. Everybody deserves their best start in life, because the world is going to mess you up, once you’re older. Most people learn how to roll with the punches, but not everyone can— not everyone is equipped, from the beginning, to deal with the difficult things that happen to them, that come into their lives and turn everything upside down.”

Luisa turns quiet. Her expression has fallen, somewhat, has turned still and solemn and ever so slightly distant from the table that she’s sitting at. Rose waits patiently for her to return. Dark eyes meet hers from above their respective meals, and finally Luisa smiles again, but Rose sees it now for what it really is, with all of the cracks splintering through it.

“I just think everyone deserves to have the best start in life,” Luisa finishes. “And, I liked knowing that I was helping towards that, for some people.”

Rose mulls her words over through a mouthful of food.

Once she has swallowed again, she asks, “Would you ever go back into that field of work?”

“I don’t know,” Luisa answers truthfully, and exhales. “Maybe, once my suspension is lifted, but I really don’t know. And, who would _hire me_?” After a moment’s pause, a small smirk forms on Luisa’s mouth, and then grows to a full-fledged grin. At Rose’s curious look, she says, “I’m sick of talking about myself. Please, tell me something about you.”

Rose stops cutting into her food and looks up, surprised. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” Luisa shrugs. “Tell me about work.”

Rose’s groan is instant and hilarious.

“Alright,” Luisa grins, “tell me about what you do outside of work. What are your hobbies and interests?”

“My hobbies and interests?” Rose pulls a face. “You make it sound like we’re in a forced getting-to-know-you seminar.”

“Rose, just answer the question,” Luisa sighs, and Rose pokes her tongue out at her. “Or, don’t you have any? I know you _lawyer types_ , your job gets in the way of everything. Maybe you’re so reluctant to tell me about yourself because that’s all that there is to it.”

It’s said in an airy voice that Rose knows Luisa is using to purposefully goad her into revealing pieces of herself, but it works.

“Hey,” she says, frowning, and Luisa’s smirk gentles. “I have interests. I’m plenty interesting, thank you.” Luisa hides a laugh behind a sip of water, while Rose reins in her offence. “Actually, I— like to draw. I like photography, and going to the theatre, and pretentious art exhibitions.” She meets Luisa’s gaze, challenging, and then deflates. “But, admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve done any of that.”

“Lawyer types,” Luisa agrees with a mock-sigh.

“My career is important to me,” Rose shrugs, and Luisa’s smile turns soft and private. “What?”

“Maybe our work ethics are another difference,” she points out, but her smirk is self-deprecating and a little sad.

Rose isn’t sure why, but she’s filled with the sudden purpose to correct that.

“Oh, I don’t know, a few differences aren’t that bad. Besides, it’s not easy being _too_ similar to somebody. That’s just bound to cause chaos.”

Rose says this as she places her utensils down on her plate, effectively finishing her meal. She takes a sip from her sangria, draining it, and then seems to notice that Luisa is watching her. Luisa’s own plate is almost empty, but she’s only been moving the food around for the past five or ten minutes, not actually eating it.

“You’re right,” Luisa says, breaking the silence that had settled over them. “It’s important to have differences, especially in relationships— you need both yin and yang, if you like. For example,” and she twirls the cinnamon stick around her empty sangria glass, turning all of the little pieces of apple at the bottom, “you don’t both want to sleep on the same side of the bed, or have the same favourites and least favourites in a box of chocolates.”

“Right,” Rose agrees, placing her elbows on the table and resting her chin atop her folded hands. “A little cynicism is needed, too, to counter blind optimism.”

“A little blind optimism,” Luisa counters, “to keep a cynic sane.”

Rose nods her head, _touché_ , while grinning.

“Then, of course, there’s the matter of who’s more dominant in bed.”

Rose arches an eyebrow. “You don’t think that just comes naturally, depending on your partner?”

“Oh, absolutely, but there are patterns that people fall into.” She circles the rim of her glass with two fingers. “Dominant, submissive; top, bottom. Sure, everyone’s versatile, but that takes nothing away from _preference_.”

Rose nods her head, but her gaze is hyper-focused.

“So, which are you?” she asks, too quietly, swallowing.

Luisa’s smile – wicked, sinful – should be answer enough.

“Oh, I like to be in control,” Luisa tells her. “I know what I like in bed, and I’m good at figuring other people out, too— call it a hidden talent. There’s something freeing about handing that control over, though, isn’t there? You don’t have to be responsible for yourself, for just a little while, for just long enough. You put responsibility for your own pleasure in somebody else’s hands; you feel what they want you to feel, you come when they want you to come. I like being the person who decides what happens, and how.”

Rose’s cheeks have turned the faintest pink beneath her makeup. She nods her head coolly, quietly, lips parted and dry.

“Question of the hour, then,” Luisa says, wetting her lips. “Which are _you_?”

Rose holds her gaze for a moment or two, pupils dilated. Luisa is sure that she already knows the right answer, whether Rose will give it to her, or not.

Finally, Rose clears her throat and manages, “I don’t believe you can put people into boxes like that.”

“No?” Luisa asks, but she’s smiling, and Rose can’t meet her eye for just a moment. “Would you like dessert, by the way? I’m sparing no expenses for this apology, remember.”

“Actually, I think I’m ready to leave.” Rose clears her throat, and when she meets Luisa’s gaze, this time, her expression is determined. She takes a breath and seems to hold it there, like she’s building up the courage to say something. Luisa gives her all the time that she needs. “Come back to my place for a night cap?”

Luisa licks the smile from her lips. “You know I don’t drink.”

“That’s not really what I was asking.”

Luisa meets Rose’s gaze across the table and feels something almost overpowering set her blood alight.

“I’ll get the bill.”

 

 

Luisa waits until Rose has locked her apartment door before she gives up all pretence for why she’s here, and presses Rose back against it.

Their first kiss is closed-mouth chaste and tastes like apple cider sangria.

Luisa places her hands on Rose’s hips, keeping her touch respectable, while Rose’s find her shoulders and loop around the back of her head. That first kiss deepens into a second, a third, until Rose slips her fingers into Luisa’s hair, beginning to pick out all of the little pins keeping it held up, and then Luisa stops counting altogether. Rose lets the pins fall where they stand, and it’s the only other sound for a moment, aside from the parting and joining of their lips, and the moans and sighs caught in between.

It’s a comfortable pace that Luisa is all too happy to indulge in, until Rose sucks her bottom lip between her own and releases it with just the right amount of grazed teeth for Luisa’s knees to almost buckle out from beneath her. She draws back with an involuntary moan, pressing her hips closer to Rose’s for support, until there’s barely a whisper of space between them.

Rose is smiling at her, when she opens her eyes.

“You like to play rough?” Luisa whispers, digging her thumbs into the divots at Rose’s hips, only for Rose to press back into her touch. Her blue eyes flicker closed, and Luisa takes a moment to appreciate the colour in her cheeks. She leans in close enough that her lips almost brush against Rose’s. “Tell me if I do anything you don’t like, okay? I want to know.”

Rose struggles to form a sentence when Luisa’s mouth descends along her neck, and so she simply nods her head, fingers plunging deep into Luisa’s hair and holding her there. Luisa is careful not to leave a mark as she peels Rose’s dress ever so slightly away from her collarbones, and follows the newly revealed skin right down with her mouth, into the freckled cleavage that has been haunting her daydreams since earlier that morning.

An insistent tug on her hair, not enough to really hurt, draws Luisa up again and back into Rose’s kisses.

She tries her little lip-biting trick, again, but Luisa is prepared for it now, and as her body reacts, she runs her hands up the front of Rose’s dress to cup her breasts.

“Oh, _god_ ,” Rose sighs, drawing momentarily away, as Luisa palms her breasts through the fabric of her dress and push-up bra. Luisa grins against the underside of her jaw, teasing the skin there with lips and tongue. She presses Rose’s breasts between her hands, finding her nipples even through the layers covering them, and Rose keens and falls back against the door. “Harder,” she whispers, strained, in Luisa’s ear, “it’s okay, I like it.”

Luisa is only too happy to please.

She angles her body so that her thigh is between Rose’s, and allows Rose to grind against it while she plays with her breasts and lathes her throat with attention. She can feel Rose’s heartbeat against her palms, quick and strong, making her dizzy. Eventually, she draws her hands away, and down, down Rose’s body.

Rose’s head tips down to see her, eyes opening, with a look of confused dissatisfaction, until Luisa lowers herself to her knees.

Gentle fingers part the thigh-length slit in her dress, revealing more skin, and Rose has to bite her lip to keep from moaning at just the sight of Luisa below her, her lips pressed to the soft skin just above her knee. Luisa looks up at her through her lashes, one hand at her hip, the other curving inside of Rose’s dress to hold her leg in place.

Without breaking eye contact, she slides her hand all the way up Rose’s bare thigh, and brings her panties down with it as she’s drawing it back out again. Rose takes a shuddering breath above her, and Luisa helps her step out of her underwear, thanking her with a kiss to her exposed inner-thigh.

“I want you to keep these on,” Luisa says when Rose tries to slip out of her heels, as well. She looks up at her with a smile that stops Rose’s counter-argument before it can leave her mouth, and draws all of that leg over her shoulder, telling Rose, “Hold onto me, you’re gonna need the support.”

The last she sees of Rose’s face, before Luisa disappears between her legs, is an arched eyebrow and her lips parted in challenge.

She supposes, then, that the noise Rose makes when Luisa slides her tongue through her arousal, means _she’s won_.

When Luisa’s tongue presses into her entrance, Rose’s hands delve into her hair, but Luisa doesn’t let her set the pace. She takes her time, drawing Rose’s wetness through her folds, circling her clit. She alternates between broad strokes with the flat of her tongue, and using just the very tip of it to apply direct pressure over Rose’s clit, while Rose gasps and shakes and makes unintelligible noises above her.

At one point, Luisa sucks Rose’s clit into her mouth, and the entire world disappears behind the soft, shaking thighs that close around her head.

Luisa pries them open again with stroking hands and an amused hum, the vibrations from which almost have Rose squeezing her legs shut, again.

She does not tease her, is the only consolation.

Luisa eats Rose out like it’s her solitary purpose in life, like nothing else matters, like she simply won’t be satisfied until Rose is shaking and mewling and crying from over-sensitivity.

And, she lets Rose come so close.

She lets her reach the very peak of her climax, the point where Rose can already feel it, premature, quaking in her legs, and all she really needs is a little more encouragement—

Luisa draws herself away, pressing her mouth to the supple skin of Rose’s thigh, instead, and Rose makes an indignant, breathless noise above her. Her shaking fingers tighten in Luisa’s hair, as though to draw her back out from beneath her dress, but Luisa takes her time to re-emerge. When she does, her face is still wet with Rose’s arousal; she wipes her cheeks and chin with a thumb and licks the residual wetness off.

Above her, panting, frowning, Rose asks, “What the hell was that?”

Luisa sits back on her heels, drawing a hand up and down Rose’s leg after settling her suspended foot back on the ground, again. She smiles up at Rose and Rose’s breath catches in her throat over how _pretty_ she is.

“Don’t worry, I’m not done,” Luisa says, “but I didn’t want you to come yet.”

Rose looks at her and it is absurd, really, just how much power Luisa has when she’s on her knees in front of her.

The illusion is shattered, just a little, when Luisa slides her hands into Rose’s and uses them to pull herself back up to her feet, almost stumbling in her heels. She doesn’t kick them off just yet, though, as the height advantage lets her press her mouth to Rose’s in a lingering kiss. When she pulls back, Rose’s expression is soft and pacified.

“Come on,” Luisa tells her, tugging on her hands. “Take me to bed, we’re going to do this properly.”

 

 

Later, Luisa leaves Rose in bed and slips into the en-suite bathroom alone.

It’s late and it’s quiet, and Luisa takes her time cleaning herself up, using Rose’s products to properly remove her makeup and cleanse her face afterwards. She runs a comb through her hair, too quickly to do anything but tame half the tangles that Rose had mussed it into, and then steals a spray of perfume before she goes.

When she opens the door again, it’s to find Rose in the bed where she’d left her, propped up by three pillows and black-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Luisa pulls the bathroom door shut with a smile, and prowls closer. She is wearing nothing but her matching underwear, and crawls up the bed until Rose is forced to accommodate her over her legs.

“I like these,” Luisa says, pulling Rose’s glasses down to the tip of her nose.

Rose pushes them back up again with pursed lips. “I was going to read before bed.”

“You’re going to have to let me out, first.”

“I know.”

Rose reaches up a hand to brush a strand of hair back behind Luisa’s ear.

“I’m glad you didn’t have me arrested yesterday,” Luisa says, her eyes momentarily closing as Rose’s fingers brush her cheeks.

“Hm, I don’t know,” Rose hums, tracing the pad of her thumb over the freckles on Luisa’s face, “it would have brought me some satisfaction, at the time.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Luisa pouts. “I brought you plenty satisfaction tonight.”

Rose smiles as she watches Luisa push back off from the bed, rolling her body over the edge until she lands on her feet with a quiet thud. She admires Luisa’s body while she gathers up her dress, turning it the right way around, and then slipping back into it. The heels come next, although Luisa doesn’t bother to put them on, just carries them in one hand and waits patiently for Rose to slide naked out of bed, after her.

“I really enjoyed tonight,” Luisa says, watching her body, as Rose leads her to the front door and unlocks it.

“Me, too,” Rose agrees, and Luisa can’t help but push her luck; she leans in for a kiss that Rose accepts too readily, and slides a hand all the way down from the hint of Rose’s ribs, to the curve of her ass. Luisa pulls herself away again with a groan; linger any longer, and she’d be pushing her patience to its limits.

Rose laughs at the scrunched-up expression on her face, but it’s a breathless, not totally _unaffected_ sound.

“Goodnight,” she says, and opens the door. Luisa forces herself through it.

“Am I forgiven, then?” she asks, once she’s out in the corridor, and Rose closes the door until just her face, her hair, and a sinful slip of her skin is visible through the gap.

Rose taps her fingers against the door, her gaze travelling the length of Luisa’s body.

“I’ll consider it,” she shrugs, and closes the door behind her.

 

Inside Rafael’s apartment, Luisa cleans her teeth and falls back on the bed with an overdramatic groan.

She presses both hands to her face and hopes they dull the sound of her laughter, when it comes booming out, so powerful that she almost chokes on it.

And _god_ , she thinks, but it feels so _fucking good_ to be back.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Luisa doesn’t see Rose the next day, or the day after that.

She spends a little time cleaning out Rafael’s apartment, and shopping, and answering the most recent emails in her 208-and-counting unread mail backlog. She fills Rafael’s apartment with little touches of herself – a misplaced shoe here, or a sun hat discarded and forgotten there, books and sunglasses and jewellery scattered throughout, like she’s shedding little pieces of herself until the apartment feels comfortable.

She introduces flowers, and perfume, and disinfectant, until the entire apartment smells familiar— just like her.

On the third day, Luisa gets sick of spending so much time indoors, and makes the short stroll to the beach.

She takes an over-sized beach bag, and a towel, and a new novel that the sixty-something-year-old bookshop owner had recommended her, when she’d asked to see her queer literature section the day before. She picks a spot to lie down in far enough away from the sea that she’s relatively alone and unbothered, but for the odd too-young-for-school aged kid running past her towel, followed by a half-jogging adult.

Solitude does not come naturally to Luisa.

It’s something that she’s had to train herself into enjoying, into appreciating, when she’s so used to her life being so full of people all the time. Luisa has a laugh that has its own gravitational field; she draws people towards her the way that stars draw in unsuspecting asteroids, and then casts them back out again, adrift. Occasionally, there are collisions.

Luisa finds people easy – even when they’re not.

She is fluent in forgiveness and over-generous with her trust, and she had discovered, too early, that she can sustain herself on superficial friendships if she just has enough of them around her— distracting her, keeping her afloat.

Trouble seems to find her whenever she’s alone and left to her own devices (or, _vices_ , as it may be).

It had been the recommendation of a therapist (the best she’s had, really, the one whose card she still keeps tucked into her purse— just in case), that Luisa spend more time by herself. So, she had started taking walks alone, and going out alone, and not even with the purpose in mind of bringing somebody back home with her.

Eventually, she had toured half the world alone, and all of those solitary outings had made for the perfect practice. She had learned how to be by herself again, learned how to trust herself, how to recognise and follow her own instincts. Luisa had learned what she liked, again, what piqued her own personal enjoyments and amusements, outside of her hive-like, social-media-oriented friend groups.

Now, she lies alone on a crowded beach, and basks in her own sun-warmed, lotion-scented solitude.

At least, until she becomes over-invested in her novel, and has to put it down for the day or risk a stress-induced headache.

Luisa rolls herself over onto her stomach and buries her face in her arms, letting the sun brown a bikini-line into her back, instead. She remains like this until her phone begins buzzing by her hip. Luisa grasps for it blindly and holds it up to one ear, otherwise unmoving from her position. “Hello?” she asks without lifting her head.

“ _It’s me_ ,” Rafael says, amidst copious background noise, “ _just checking in. What are you up to?_ ”

Luisa identifies the noise as mid-day Miami traffic.

“I’m just at the beach,” she says, closing her eyes, “where are you going?”

Rafael fills the next twelve minutes telling her about a meeting that he’s attending with a woman who used to train domesticated wildcats, before she lost a finger and her left eye, and decided to try her hand at being a children’s entertainer. “It was a freak sea-otter attack,” Rafael says, and Luisa’s sure he’s making the whole thing up, and doesn’t care.

It’s no longer a surprise when he calls her just to talk, like this.

While she was away, they would have to squeeze their conversations in around clashing time zones and busy schedules, but they made it work. Usually, when Rafael was driving to and from work, and Luisa was in the midst of a Parisian street-festival; or just waking up in a tent in the middle of the Gobi Desert; or previously sleeping soundly in a Highland bed-and-breakfast, when she’d stayed awake and on the phone to him just long enough to describe the view of the sunrise over the distant peak of Ben Nevis, until Rafael insisted she go back to bed.

It’s funny, although it makes sense when she really thinks about it, how much closer they were able to grow when there was so much distance between them.

“ _So_ ,” Rafael starts, and Luisa is given the distinct impression of reluctant interest, “ _how did your date with Rose go?_ ”

Luisa snorts into the receiver. “I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to ask.”

“ _Some of us work for a living, you know? I’ve been busy._ ”

“It was pretty good, actually,” Luisa says, ignoring him. “And, you know it wasn’t a date.”

Rafael’s laughter is tinny and distant through the loud-speaker.

“ _So, you won’t be seeing her again?_ ”

“I’m not ruling that out.” She rolls onto her back, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “Why are you so bothered by it, anyway?”

“ _Not bothered by it…_ ”

“Sounds like you’re bothered by it.”

“ _She’s my neighbour, is all I’m saying,_ ” Rafael says, and yep, he’s bothered by it. “ _If things go south, I still have to live next door to her, okay?_ ”

“What exactly are you expecting me to do to her, that she’d exact some horrible revenge on _you_?” Luisa huffs, dropping her hand from her hair and resting it behind her head, instead. She uses it to shield her eyes with her elbow and looks up into the blue, blue sky. “Anyway, you’re getting ahead of yourself. We had a good time, and that’s it. That’s all I was looking for.”

“ _Yeah, you said, but—_ ”

“And if you bug me about it one more time, I’m going to tell you _in detail_ just how much of a good time we had,” Luisa warns him. Rafael makes a hesitant, repulsed noise on the other end of the line. “Go ahead, try me.”

“ _Lu_ ,” he groans, and she can easily picture the look on his face. It only makes her smile wider. “ _Time out, okay? This is important. I’m not saying that you’re going to do anything wrong, I just mean that you should be careful. You’ve only been back a few days and you’ve already almost been arrested. Maybe just don’t poke the bear, is all I’m saying._ ”

Luisa releases a slow breath.

“You know,” she says, drawing her words out, “I’m so glad you said that, actually, because did I mention just how _good_ Rose fucked me the other night? Because, oh my _god_ , Raf, that woman’s tongue is like—” she cuts herself off with a tongue-rolling, head-shaking, trilling noise, and flops back against her beach towel.

She’s still laughing long after Rafael has hung up on her.

 

 

Luisa arrives home just before the sun sets, and swings the door to Rafael’s balcony wide open to catch the last rays of it.

She ditches her sundress for a pair of Rafael’s gym shorts, applies a fresh coat of sunscreen, and drapes herself over an expensive looking deck chair. She has iced tea on one side of her, and a bowl of chopped fruit on the other, and she alternates between them until she is full and almost asleep. A noise from somewhere nearby rouses her, moments later, and Luisa startles awake.

When she looks up, the sun has slipped over the horizon, and the blue of twilight is chasing the pink out of the sky.

Luisa groans and stretches, turning her neck this way and that until it cracks, and then notices that she’s not entirely alone. On the balcony beside hers, wearing tailored slacks and a white shirt unbuttoned just short of being inappropriate, is Rose. She’s holding a glass of water in one hand, the other wrapped around her middle, and smiles at Luisa when she meets her gaze.

“Sorry for waking you,” Rose says, in a tone of voice that says she’s maybe not that sorry at all. “Busy day?”

Luisa takes a deep breath in, willing her fatigue away, and shakes her head.

“Hey, no, no worries.” She sits up and stretches, and does not miss the way that Rose takes in her exposed torso. She’s still wearing the bikini top she’d gone to the beach in, and Rafael’s gym shorts come way past her knees (and likely don’t even reach his, when he’s wearing them). Luisa twists in the deck chair so that her body is facing Rose. “Busy day yourself?” she asks, taking in Rose’s outfit.

“As always,” Rose nods, “but I’m used to it.”

Luisa raises a fist and shakes it. “Get it, girl.”

Rose smiles and takes a sip from her water, turning her gaze over to the view. Luisa admires the last of the pink sky, reflected back in Rose’s face, and figures that their polite small talk is over. She’s just relaxed enough that she probably really could fall asleep, if left alone for ten minutes, and its with this lazy contentedness that she watches Rose.

She catches the hint of hesitation, as Rose touches a hand to her lips, tucks her hair away from her face, and then finally turns back to Luisa.

“I started the novel you gave me,” she says.

Luisa nods her head for Rose to continue, and then her mind registers what Rose has actually said, and she tilts her head and blinks. “You started it?” she asks, pushing herself up with one hand. Rose steps closer to her edge of the balcony, leaning against the rail. “Well, what are your thoughts so far?”

They lose the next twenty minutes to an in-depth character study and plot analysis.

“But, I’m only a third of the way through it,” Rose says dismissively, and the conversation falls quiet again. She’s leaning against the balcony railing, now, pivoting on one foot with the other resting behind her ankle for support. She’d set her glass of water down three minutes into the discussion, so as to better implement her wild hand gestures. “I’m sure my theories will unravel, the further through the book I get.”

“You’d be surprised,” Luisa shrugs. “But just focus on reading it the first time around, okay? You’ll have plenty of time to over-analyse it later.”

“Right, right.” Rose corrects her posture, rubbing a hand to the small of her back. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“Yep.”

“Me, too,” Rose nods. “Do you want to come over?”

Luisa purses her lips, pretending to think it over. “Sure, let me change first.”

She moves to stand, but hesitates at the sight of Rose’s shaking head. The look on Rose’s face is nothing short of lascivious as she runs her gaze over Luisa’s body, again, from her exposed midriff to the gym shorts hiding the best part of her legs. When Rose meets her gaze, she’s smiling. “Don’t bother,” she says, stepping away from the balcony railing. “I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”

Luisa watches her go with a grin.

 

 

Luisa sees Rose twice more within her first week-and-a-half back in Miami.

Once again when their balcony-time coincides, and once more the following morning because Rose had subtly mentioned a free spot in her schedule, and Luisa is never one to recognise an opportunity and not take advantage of it. She doesn’t ask for Rose’s number, and Rose doesn’t ask for hers, like they’ve made a silent agreement with one another to keep this easy – to keep this about sex.

Luisa isn’t sure how long she’ll be in Miami, and Rose’s schedule is too full for a relationship right now, she tells Luisa, sitting half-dressed at her vanity table and removing her earrings, while Luisa lounges still-naked in bed. Luisa does not point out that Rose has had time for _her_ , because it’s not the same. She’s a booty call, a very willing and satisfied booty call, and that’s all she wants. That Rose feels the same uncomplicates everything, and so Luisa has no reason to rock the boat.

(That the boat rocks anyway, sometimes, completely out of her control, feels just a _little_ unfair to Luisa.)

 

 

“ _Have you thought any more about what your next move is?_ ”

Luisa pulls on the top of a book’s spine, just enough to tilt it out of the ordered row and give her a peek at its cover. She twists her head to read the cursive font along the worn binding, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, and then pushes the book back into place again amongst its peers. The bookshop isn’t large, and she only has to do a 180 degree turn to find the next row of shelves to peruse.

“Not really,” she tells Rafael. “I’ll think about it later.”

“ _’Later’ is probably gonna catch up to you sooner than you think,_ ” Rafael says, and Luisa rolls her eyes. “ _Why not just put a few feelers out—jobs, apartments, that kind of thing?_ ”

“Who says I’m staying?”

“ _You’re not tired of travelling yet_?” She can tell from his tone of voice that he’s smirking. “ _I thought that was the only reason you came home._ ”

“Not really. Not the only reason, anyway.” Luisa pulls another book out from a shelf, scanning the blurb. Rafael does not interrupt her silence, although only because he probably thinks she’s musing over something poignant. Luisa tucks the book under one arm, satisfied, and changes the hand that’s holding her phone. “I just want to treat the next week or two as if I’m on an extended vacation. It’s just nice to not have to plan my next move, to get plane tickets in place, or look up hotel vacancies, or work out which country my luggage has been lost in.”

Luisa sighs over the receiver as she moves a little ways down the row of books, scanning the titles now with listless interest.

“I’m in no rush to make a decision.” She has a thought that makes her stop where she’s standing. “Why, do you need your place back? Because I can f—”

“ _No, no_ ,” Rafael quickly interrupts her. “ _I was just asking. Honestly, I barely use the apartment. It’s easier to just stay at the Marbella for work, but sometimes I just need my own space. Something that’s mine._ ”

Luisa makes a quiet noise of understanding.

“ _Stay as long as you want. Really._ ”

There’s a moment of silence as Luisa meanders between the shelves, broken only by the ebb and flow of traffic coming from Rafael’s side of the line.

Sometimes, they can spend entire phone calls not speaking, like this. Like when Luisa found herself unknowingly hand-fed a liqueur-filled chocolate by a pretty stranger, and panicked over her sobriety. She’d lost the number of her last sponsor months before, but Rafael’s she knew by heart. After a thirty-minute pep talk, throughout which she went non-verbal, Rafael had stayed on the line with her until she’d stopped crying and could speak again.

Or, when his routine check-up had shown a discrepancy, and Rafael had called Luisa because she’s the one who’d been there throughout it all, when he last went through chemo, and he needed her to do the same again if that’s what it came to this time. It was the middle of the night for Rafael, barely lunchtime for Luisa, and they had talked until they ran out of topics to cover. Luisa only hung up the line when she heard him snoring.

(It had been a false alarm, that time, and Rafael had had to spend twenty minutes convincing Luisa not to cut her trip short, that he was _sure_ there wasn’t anything wrong, the cancer wasn’t back, he wasn’t lying just to keep her from rushing back home. He’d had to send her a copy of his test results, in the end, and Luisa had sent him back three paragraphs on how he should be eating better.)

He stays quiet, now, as Luisa moves on to the next aisle of crammed bookshelves.

Luisa almost forgets he’s on the line.

When she realises how quiet she’s being, she asks him, almost guiltily, “So, tell me what’s happening with you, anyway?” and Rafael fills up the remainder of their conversation talking about work, and his social life, and, when Luisa prods, the casual relationship that he’s reluctant to say that he’s _in_ , exactly.

Luisa puts the phone down and steps up to the counter to pay. She slides the book she’d picked up earlier across it, and leans into the counter with one hip as she digs through her purse for money. Opposite her, the sixty-something-year-old shopkeeper puts down the magazine that she’s been reading and peruses her.

“You’re back soon. Finish that last one already?”

“I read books like that for breakfast,” Luisa brags, finding her money. She counts out a couple of loose bills and slides them across the counter, too. “Actually, I read it too quickly and got an emotional hangover, otherwise I would’ve been back sooner. Why is cheesy romance so good when it’s _gay_?” She crosses her arms and leans them on the counter top, while the shopkeeper hums and counts her change out. “Didn’t figure you for the _Cosmo_ type.”

The shopkeeper looks down at the magazine in her lap. Her hair is grey with a streak of pink through it that she’s clearly done herself. Several months ago, most likely. She looks like the kind of woman who would be told, _you need to stop dressing like this and act your age_ by her peers, and Luisa loves it.

“I like the horoscopes.”

She hands Luisa her change and Luisa slips it just as easily into the charity bucket for homeless people that’s sitting on the counter.

“See you in a few days,” Luisa calls as she departs, and she’s only half joking.

 

 

Luisa really does prefer Rose’s apartment to Rafael’s, although now that she’s cleaned his place up a bit, and filled it with all of those pieces of herself, she can’t put her finger on why.

She sits alone on Rose’s bed while Rose takes a shower, her feet sprawled out and a book on her belly. She probably has a double chin, in this position, but she doesn’t care. Luisa turns the page and absorbs herself in the end of a chapter. She hears the shower shut off, but the change registers at the back of her mind without her paying too much attention to it.

“You haven’t moved since I left you,” Rose comments, wrapped in a towel and letting off steam.

“What?” Luisa asks without looking up, and Rose leaves her be.

By the time Luisa has finished the chapter, she finds Rose partially dressed and finger-combing products into her hair. She’s sitting at the vanity table, giving Luisa the perfect view of her freckled back. When Luisa meets her gaze in the mirror, Rose smiles and asks, “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

Luisa sets the book aside and wiggles her eyebrows. “Why, you wanna schedule another booty call?”

“Not quite,” Rose smirks, but her expression falters with nerves. She turns back to the vanity table, applies a generous amount of lotion to one hand, and begins rubbing it over her arms, neck, and chest. “I have somewhere to be, actually. A function at some art gallery – it’ll be full of pretentious assholes, probably, but I promised a friend that I’d go.”

“That sounds right up your alley,” Luisa says, and Rose tries not to take offence. “So, why do you look like you’re dreading it?”

“Because,” Rose sighs, “she’ll be there with her new girlfriend, and I’m going to be third wheeling them for the entire night.”

“Ah…”

“But, if I brought a plus-one…”

Luisa smirks and asks, before she can stop herself, “Are you asking me to go with you?”

Rose turns around to face her, properly, not in the vanity mirror. She looks like she’s weighing up just how bad of an idea this is, her eyes settled on Luisa’s smiling mouth. “I was considering it,” she agrees, pursing her lips. “I’d rather not go alone, and I can’t back out at such short notice. Would you want to go, though?”

Luisa shrugs and sits up, sliding her legs off the bed.

She makes her way around to the vanity table and leans her butt against it, blocking the mirror. Rose has to lean back on the stool to not be directly facing her boobs. She looks up at Luisa, while Luisa picks up the bracelet that she’d left on the dressing table before Rose could get her out of her clothes, and clasps it back into place on her wrist.

“I could be persuaded,” Luisa says. “I mean, I have nothing else on.”

Rose opens her mouth to speak, but Luisa interrupts her before she can utter a word.

“What’s in it for me, though?”

Rose closes her mouth, and at once her grateful expression shifts into something mischievous.

“I would be _very_ appreciative,” she says, slipping a hand along Luisa’s leg, just beneath her knee. She slides it up to the hem of her dress, and then back down again, giving the supple flesh there a squeeze. Luisa sucks in a breath. Rose uses Luisa’s distraction against her, tugging her ever so slightly so that she’s leaning against the centre of the vanity table, with her legs on either side of Rose.

“How appreciative?” Luisa asks, swallowing, but there’s a glint in her eyes.

Rose slides both hands along Luisa’s thighs, up to her ass, and tugs her forward until Luisa all but falls into her lap, straddling her.

“Why don’t I give you a preview?”

 

 

Rose picks Luisa up at eight, sharp.

“I’m ready, just give me five minutes,” Luisa tells her as she opens the door, then disappears back into the bedroom almost immediately. She’s applying a quick layer of lipstick when Rose leans against the bedroom doorframe, watching her. Luisa spots her out of the corner of her eye and asks, “Is there a car waiting?”

Rose takes in the short blue dress that Luisa’s wearing, lingering on her exposed legs. “No, I’m driving tonight.”

“Oh, good.” Luisa pops the cap back on her lipstick and tosses it towards the bed, where her phone and a purse have been placed with equal care. She makes a quick swipe for a pair of heels, and slips them on while half-leaning against a wall. “I just need to find my keys, and then I’m ready to g— _oh_.”

Rose looks up from where she’d been perusing the growing collection of books on the nightstand. Luisa is staring at her, agape.

“What’s wrong?”

“No— nothing,” Luisa shakes her head. “You just didn’t say anything about _this_.”

Before Rose can ask, Luisa is nearing her. Her hands go to the lapels of Rose’s tailored suit jacket, peeling it away from her chest. She just about refrains from biting her bottom lip, the freshly applied lipstick in mind, although Luisa does tweak one of the elasticated suspenders. Her finger loops beneath it, travelling its length, her knuckles barely grazing over Rose’s breast.

“This is _so_ unfair,” Luisa whispers.

Rose’s smile is blood red and as smug as Luisa’s ever seen her. “You like this?”

“I can’t verbally express how much I like this.”

“That’s fine, I accept non-verbal expressions of appreciation, also.” Luisa’s gaze finally lifts to meet hers, and she almost whines at how amused and _cruel_ Rose looks when she shakes her head. “ _Later_.”

“God, why do I always go for mean girls.” She snaps Rose’s suspender and takes only a little pleasure in Rose’s chirp of surprise when it hits back against her chest. Sighing, Luisa looks down to the tailored trousers (stupidly expensive, she is sure, although there’s no doubt that Rose’s legs could make anything look designer), and the modest black pumps at the end of them. “Are you sure you want to go to this thing?”

“Yes,” Rose smirks, righting her jacket. “And we’re going to be late.”

“I don’t really care if we’re late.” 

“I do.”

“I don’t really care if we don’t make it there at all…”

“You promised,” Rose says— a warning.

“Did I really, though?” Luisa asks, reaching for Rose’s jacket again, only to have her hands brushed aside.

“Luisa.”

“ _Fine_.”

 

In the end, they’re barely fifteen minutes late, and their arrival goes largely unnoticed.

Luisa takes in the small gatherings of people making their way around the room, looking at blown-up photographs taken of what look to be every day people found on highstreets. The photograph facing the entrance is of what looks to be a rotund middle-aged woman in a large red coat and black boots. There’s more than one ring on every single one of her fingers, and she has twist braids all the way down to her hips.

The way that the woman stares the camera down reminds Luisa of royalty, although the hint of a wide smile dispels any sense of aloofness. A little placard on the wall names the artist _Gerel Bolormaa_. Luisa turns her attention to the next photograph – a woman with a significant tooth gap and short, baby pink hair skipping away from the camera – and nudges Rose with her elbow. “These are really good.”

“Hm?”

When Luisa looks up at her, Rose is skimming the gallery.

“Found your friend?” Luisa asks, glancing around, too, although she has no idea what to look out for. Rose shakes her head. “Maybe she’s further in. Come on, I want to look around.”

They meet the photographer on the other side of a partitioning wall— a woman who sticks out only for the denim overalls that she wears, among a crowd of suits and dresses. The photographer comes across as shy, at first glance, but when Luisa praises her work with excessive enthusiasm, a bellowing laugh draws the attention of half the room.

Luisa decides, then and there, that if fate ever brings Gerel back into her life, Luisa will take it as a sign that they’re meant to be best friends.

Before Luisa can prod her new future bestie for further information on her work process, Rose perks up beside her and touches a hand to Luisa’s elbow. “There’s Jane.” Luisa’s gaze swings around until it settles on a tall, slender woman with dark hair. She wears a suit like it’s what her body was built for, and her smile is wide and sharp when she spots Rose.

The two friends meet halfway and exchange air kisses.

“I almost thought you were going to bail on me again,” Jane says.

Rose’s gaze falls to a smudge of pink lipstick against the collar of Jane’s shirt. “You’d have kept yourself entertained, if I had.”

Jane’s laugh is low and raspy, a quiet thing that doesn’t last very long, but that takes nothing away from the fondness on her face. Luisa can easily picture the two as friends. Given half the push, she could picture them as something more, too, but that little fantasy has to wait, as Rose runs a hand along her upper arm and urges her closer.

“Jane, this is Luisa.” Dark eyes and an inquiring expression turn to study her. “Luisa, this is Jane Ramos, my work colleague and begrudging friend of too-many-years.”

Luisa has always been a hugger; her body poises for it, now, until a hand is offered out for her to shake. Luisa takes it in her stride with no less enthusiasm. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she says, and means it, too. Rose is something of an enigma, still, and their current set-up hasn’t exactly allowed for her to pry too deeply within the layers of Rose’s life outside of lesbian literature and sex with Luisa.

“Likewise,” Jane grins, her gaze cutting to Rose. “Now, I understand why you’ve been blowing me off so much.”

Rose scoffs but has the decency, at least, not to deny it.

“So, how did you two meet?”

“I accidentally broke into her apartment,” Luisa says without preamble. Jane’s expression falters. “Harmless mistake, really.”

“Luisa,” Rose groans.

“ _What_?” She turns back to Jane. “I thought it was my brother’s and almost peed my pants when Rose came home – like I said, harmless mistake.”

“Has anybody ever told you that you’re _too_ honest, sometimes?” Rose asks, but she’s smiling.

“Babe, please, you’re going to be telling stories about me at events like this for years to come. Let me have this.”

Rose— doesn’t doubt that that’s the truth, actually.

Jane’s bemused smile brightens when she spots somebody over Rose’s shoulder, and waves them over. The pair turn just in time to spot a tall blonde striding forward, her aloof expression brightening into almost-a-smile— and then falling. Rose makes her face into compulsory politeness; beside her, Luisa’s mouth gapes.

“Petra?”

The blonde masks an almost-stumble well. “Luisa,” she says, faintly accented. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“You two know each other?” Jane asks, stepping around the pair.

“Petra had a thing with my brother, once.”

 “A long time ago,” Petra supplies, clearing her throat.

“Right,” Luisa says, although it barely sounds like agreement. She remembers Rafael ending the relationship _officially,_ of course, and all the shit that happened after. Petra steps awkwardly around her, as if she could avoid the topic just as easily, until she’s standing beside Jane. Luisa’s gaze zeroes in on the way that they stand with just their hips touching, and then she blinks. “So, you two are—?”

“Yes,” Petra answers too quickly, squaring her shoulders.

Luisa’s smile broadens, and Petra’s body seems to tense at the sight.

Between them, Jane and Rose share a look— a silent conversation, delivered within the space of a few seconds, like they can sometimes at work. Rose tucks her arm through Luisa’s, while Jane touches a hand to Petra’s hip, urging her with the faintest pressure to turn in the direction of the nearest photograph.

“Let’s get some drinks,” Jane says.

Rose, at the same time, tells Luisa, “I want to take a closer look at this piece.”

When Jane and Petra are a few steps in front of them, Luisa squeezes Rose’s hand against her arm and says, “You don’t need to manage me.”

Rose looks at her, surprised. “I wasn’t. I’m sorry if that’s how it came across.” They stop walking, while the others go ahead. “What’s the story between you two, anyway?”

“Pff,” Luisa shrugs, “she dated Raf, years back, but I _knew_ she wasn’t totally straight. Not that I pressured her into coming out or anything,” she says, to the concerned look on Rose’s face, “but she was always staring at my boobs, back then. She made it so obvious.” At Rose’s snort, Luisa shrugs and tugs her along, until they’re almost caught up to where Jane and Petra are standing.

“…thought I was obsessed with her breasts, or something, as if _every_ neckline in her wardrobe isn’t low-cut,” they overhear Petra scoff, and Luisa looks to Rose as if to say, _see_.

Rose turns away to hide her smile.

They spend an hour at the art gallery, maybe longer, while Jane and Rose catch up, and Luisa sizes up this _new Petra_ , with her bobbed hair and her bright eyes, and the smiles that come without effort, sometimes, depending on who she’s looking at. Luisa steps up beside her as they admire a picture of busker with large hands and an aged guitar.

“It’s good to see you,” Luisa tells her, neither of them making eye contact. “Looks like you’re in a really good place, these days.”

Petra releases a slow breath. “I have no idea what you mean.”

When she turns to Luisa, though, her eyes say, _you too_.

 

Later, Rose steadies herself with a hand against Luisa’s shoulder while she slips her heels off.

Luisa barely rocks when Rose wobbles against her, her attention fully on her phone and the quick text she’s drilling off to her brother (‘ _yes, you can drop by tomorrow to pick up whatever. IF u bring me coffee and a crepe. xxxxxxx’_ ). The screen lights her face up in the dim apartment, and Luisa glares into it as Rose lowers her second bare foot and pads further inside.

“Do you want some water?” Rose asks, fixing herself a glass.

“No, thanks.”

“What’s so important, there?”

“Hm?” Luisa looks up, locking her phone. “Nothing.”

She slips closer with a smile, sliding her phone along the counter top, and steals the glass out of Rose’s hand once she’s finished drinking. Rose levels her with a glare, but her expression is too soft for Luisa to take any notice of it. “Rude,” she huffs, pinching Luisa’s hip. “I can’t believe Jane liked you so much.”

“Liked me?” Luisa gasps, coming up for air. The glass is half empty; she passes it back to Rose while wiping the excess water from her lips. “I vaguely insulted her girlfriend and probably talked over her the whole night.” She says it flippantly, like she’s used to people telling her that this is something that she does— and, she is.

“Exactly.” Rose drains the remainder of the glass and moves to put it in the sink for later. “And, she usually tells me I have the _worst_ taste in dates.”

Rose moves away from the sink and out of the kitchen, but when she looks over one shoulder, it’s to find that Luisa isn’t following her.

“Date?” Luisa asks, eyebrows raised, her smirk wry and not nearly as pronounced as Rose is used to seeing. “You think we’re dating?”

“That’s—” Rose chokes on her words. “That’s not what I meant, obviously.”

“Well, good,” Luisa says, slinking forward. She snakes her hands around Rose’s hips, and Rose wriggles against her. “Because you’re a good time, Rose, like _the best_ , but that’s all this is. Alright?” She backs Rose up as she talks, pushing her into the bedroom. Rose makes a high-pitched noise and nods her head.

“You’re a fling,” Rose says, breathless as Luisa’s hands push her suit jacket over her shoulders, peeling it down her arms. “Nothing more.”

“That’s right.” The jacket falls to Rose’s elbows and Luisa helps it along the rest of the way, until it drops to the floor. The suspenders come next, falling on either side of Rose’s hips. The edge of the bed hitting the back of her knees unbalances Rose, and Luisa pushes her down on top of it, crawling over her as Rose inches herself further back. “So, don’t go getting attached to me.”

Rose moans throatily as Luisa’s teeth graze the edge of her jaw.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she groans, and rolls on top of Luisa.

 

 

Rose barely opens her eyes when Luisa stirs, well past midnight.

The apartment is quiet and dark, and she hits a hand against Luisa’s arched back until she stops trying to reach for her bra, and turns to look at her.

Rose is flat on her back, over-warm and too comfortable; she looks up at Luisa with squinting, bright eyes.

“Just stay,” she whispers, and Luisa smiles and kisses her.

“I can’t.” She nudges Rose until Rose groans. “Come on, I need you to let me out.”

She slips from the bed.

After a moment’s hesitation, Rose makes her exhausted body follow.

The corridor outside her front door is too bright, and Rose squints against it, offended, as Luisa slips outdoors. Before she can get too far, Rose catches her by the hand, drawing her back. Luisa laughs against her mouth, but the fingers that run, so gentle, through her hair make her shiver. When she pulls back, Rose looks arguably more awake, though just as disgruntled.

“If you gave me a key, I could just show myself out,” Luisa jokes, and Rose pushes her back into the corridor with a groan.

“You’re getting way ahead of yourself,” she says, and Luisa laughs herself too loudly back to Rafael’s apartment.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, just wanted to say a blanket big ass thank you to everyone who's commenting and leaving me kudos - I'm trying to respond individually to your feedback, too, but just know that it's so appreciated! 
> 
> I'm having a little trouble with this next coming chapter, but I'm determined to get it up a day ahead of schedule as a cheeky birthday gift from me to you. I'll also be on a sunny English seaside holiday next week, however, so there *may* be delays for the next coming chapters - I'm thinking there's two more to go, but I have a tendency to over-write, so who knows. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I'd really planned on getting this chapter out much sooner, but I've been horribly ill and am not yet 100%, so! Here it is. Terribly late. I'll do my best to get the next chapter out for next Tuesday but I can't make any promises right now, so we'll see how that goes. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me so far. ^^

Rafael wakes Luisa up the next morning with a fist against the door and a crepe in a takeout box.

Luisa liberates it from his grasp before he has a chance to say, “Good morning,” to her retreating back.

“You forgot the coffee,” she says from the kitchen, grabbing a fork.

Alone, Rafael takes in his apartment with a small frown.

It looks different than it had when she’d first arrived, filled as it is with little touches of his sister, that it takes him by surprise— it could almost just _be_ Luisa’s apartment that he’s come to visit. The changes are subtle, individually, but altogether they have a dramatic effect on the place. But then, Luisa’s always had the ability to do that, to make herself right at home in places that she isn’t.

Rafael wonders if this is why she’s been able to travel for so long, flitting from one city to the next, from one country to its neighbour, never settling anywhere for longer than a few weeks at a time. It’s a trait that he’s envied in her, and admired, as they grew up together, dragged from one hotel to the next.

It’s not that Luisa doesn’t need to put down roots, its that she puts them down with every footstep, no matter where she is, whether she has any right to or not. She has no time for that in-between-period that most people need to acclimatise to a new situation, to new people. Every house she enters, she treats as her own; every new acquaintance is a fast friend. She is impatient and ballsy and naïve, Rafael thinks, but not unkindly. It is _exhausting_.

He doesn’t know anybody else in the world who can take something that isn’t hers, and _make it hers_ , as well as Luisa.

Currently, that being an old stretched-out t-shirt of his, that covers her like a too-short dress.

“Have you been in my wardrobe?” he asks, although there’s nowhere else she’d have gotten it from.

Luisa turns to look at him, holding the takeout box below her chin and forking the crepe into her mouth in too-big chunks. There’s already chocolate smudged in one corner of her lips. She looks down at what she’s wearing, then, and shrugs until her mouth is clear to speak. “I haven’t been properly shopping yet, I don’t have any pyjamas.”

“You didn’t bring any?” Rafael asks, frowning.

Luisa gestures vaguely with her fork. “I have to do laundry.”

“You’ve been here almost two weeks.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“ _Right_.” Rafael wants to argue further against that, but exercises a rare moment of restraint. “Just… make sure you wash it, after.”

Luisa scoffs and turns back into the kitchen area to make coffee.

She leaves Rafael to gather whatever he’d came for while making herself a pot in the _World’s Greatest Brother_ mug that she’d bought him for a past birthday. When Rafael returns, it’s with a dress shirt in hand and a pair of shoes. He sets the shoes down on the counter beside where Luisa has seated herself, and opens the fridge.

“Are you going out tonight?” Luisa asks, eyeing the shirt.

“No. How long has this been open?” He pulls out a carton of orange juice and Luisa shrugs. He makes himself a glass of it, anyway. “We’re doing a Spanish dance night at the Marbella this weekend, and dad says it’d look bad if I didn’t attend.” He looks none too pleased about it, is what Luisa gathers; only her brother could look so pissed off while drinking _Tropicana_.

“There’s gonna be dancing?” Luisa asks, grinning.

Rafael sighs and wipes his mouth. “Yes, there’s a beginner’s class this afternoon for the guests.”

“Will _you_ be dancing?”

“No.”

“ _Boo_. You know what your problem is?” Luisa asks, pointing her fork at him. “You don’t know how to have fun.” At Rafael’s scoff, she presses on. “No, really, you don’t. You’ve been like this ever since you were a kid— you overthink everything, and you’re so worried about keeping up appearances that it holds you back from doing anything remotely exciting. You’re afraid of looking stupid.”

“Something we don’t have in common, then?”

Luisa pops another forkful of crepe past her lips and flips him the finger.

“I’m there to oversee everything,” Rafael says as he drains his juice and rinses the glass out in the sink. “Not have fun.”

Luisa makes an unconvinced humming noise. “The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

“Alright, then.”

But, he’s not listening to her, as he readjusts the way that his dress shirt hangs over one arm and gathers up his shoes. They’ve never been overly touchy-feely in their relationship (they would brawl, as kids, until Luisa accidentally knocked one of Rafael’s baby teeth out and it was permanently banned – the cruel end of her wrestling career), and distance has not changed that.

Rafael says goodbye to her from the front door, letting himself out.

“Have a good day,” he calls behind him as the door closes.

Luisa stuffs another forkful of her chocolate breakfast past her lips, and knows that she will.

 

 

The sixty-something-year-old bookshop owner tells Luisa that her name is June.

Today, she’s in an all-green ensemble with a scarf covering the grey-pink wisps of her hair. She beckons Luisa closer with a ringed finger and points to a page in her magazine, until Luisa bends over the counter to be able to read it. “You see that?” June asks, tapping her finger next to the _Pisces_ column in the horoscope section.

“It… says I need to slow down or I’m going to burn out?” Luisa frowns up at June. “I’ve literally been on vacation for a year.”

“Not that part,” June says, turning the magazine around so that Luisa can properly see it. She taps her finger against the page again, this time by the short line of text coming from a heart-shaped bullet point. “It says here that someone special has entered your life, and the stars are telling you to take a chance on them.”

“ _June_ ,” Luisa says, eyeing her with a smile, “are you trying to ask me on a date? Because, you should know, before we get into this, my family are kind of overbearing. They’ll invite you to dinner only to interrogate you, my brother will be so jealous that I bagged myself such a hot woman that he’ll make everything so awkward around us—”

June pulls her magazine back with a deep sigh, and Luisa loses her tirade in a barely repressed laugh.

“Just this one today, please,” Luisa says, sliding a book into the place where the magazine had been, like a peace offering. She passes a ten-dollar bill across the counter, next, and her change goes straight into the charity bucket, again. This week, it’s for a local animal shelter. June has five more in her store room, each given a month out on the counter on rotation. “You put too much faith in that magazine.”

“It’s been eerily correct too many times to discount, is all I’m saying,” June tells her, while Luisa skims the blurb of her novel. “Who is she, then?”

“Hm?”

“You don’t play dumb nearly as well as you think you do,” June huffs, and Luisa can’t help but smirk. She taps that same ringed finger against her magazine, again. “What— you read this many romance novels, normally?” She makes a dismissive sound that makes Luisa grin, even as she prepares her dissent.

“Actually, yeah,” Luisa says, and is going to argue her point further, but she can’t stop smiling, suddenly. “Okay, so maybe there is someone. _But_ ,” and she jumps in quickly, before June can begin to gloat, “it’s not what you’re thinking. It’s just a little bit of fun while I’m passing through Miami, it’s not going anywhere, and it’s good like that. It’s what we both want.”

June doesn’t look convinced.

“Those sound like a lot of excuses, if you ask me.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” Luisa says, not rudely. “Or the stars. Besides, even if it’s what Rose wanted – which it _isn’t_ – I’m not sticking around here for much longer. I don’t have time for a wild, sweeping romance.” She picks her new paperback up and slips it into her purse, the top of it poking out by her hip, still. “What I _do_ have time for is some painless fun and multiple orgasms.”

June’s laugh is a low grumble in her throat.

“Just you be careful, now,” she says as she waves Luisa out the front door.

Luisa, for her part, has never been very good at heeding warnings.

 

She arrives back at Rafael’s apartment late.

The sun has already set and there’s something of a rare chill in the air. She had reached the seventh chapter of her new paperback in a quiet Italian restaurant, tucked into a corner booth with nobody but the charming, fictional characters for company, and now she’s tired and eager to get back home.

The thought gives her pause as she’s unlocking the door to Rafael’s apartment— _home_.

It isn’t, really, for all that she’s treating it like it might be.

But then home, this past year, has been more of a _feeling_ than a place, and Luisa has learned to appreciate it wherever she can find it. Further introspection on the subject comes to a grinding halt when Luisa steps into Rafael’s apartment, and onto a little folded slip of paper. She bends to retrieve it, and smiles before she’s even unfolded it, because it smells like Rose.

Luisa opens the note to reveal looping handwriting and a doodle of an open rosebud. She can’t decide if there’s something a little yonic about the curve of the inner petals, or if she’s just seeing it that way because she is who she is.

‘ _I’m available from 8pm tonight, if you have nothing else on._ ’

She turns the paper over, but that’s all there is to the message. It could be short and clinical, but with the knowledge of exactly how _little_ she will have on once she enters Rose’s bedroom, Luisa can’t help but smirk at the play on words. When she checks the time, however, Luisa realises that it’s already 9:33pm, and wonders if Rose would have rescinded the offer if she arrives too late, but it’s a thought that Luisa quickly dismisses.

She’s already looking forward to it.

After a quick freshening up, Luisa takes herself and a bottle of non-alcoholic-something to Rose’s door. She’d changed her underwear into something matching and expensive, spruced her hair just enough to give it that freshly-tousled bounce, and applied her favourite lotion until all of her exposed skin is baby-soft.

Which is why, god help her, when Rose answers the door in a pair of pyjamas, make-up free, and with her glasses on, her body sinks into the floor.

“Hi,” Rose says, surprised.

Luisa waves the little note that she’d left like a white flag, and Rose cringes, apologetic. “Am I too late?”

“I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Luisa says, and disappointment and embarrassment are heavy in her gut. She tucks the bottle of something that much closer into her chest and turns to leave, saying behind her, “I was late in, anyway, I wasn’t sure if you’d still even be up or, you know, _available_ , it’s totally fine—”

“Hey, wait!”

Luisa pivots back around, halfway back to Rafael’s apartment, to see Rose leaning out of her door. She tucks red hair back behind her ear and looks both hesitant and hopeful when she says, “You can still come in, I was just painting my toe nails and watching a movie.” Luisa looks down to Rose’s bare feet and sees that, sure enough, one foot has red nails and the other is bare.

“I’m really good at painting nails, you know?” she says, and Rose leans against her doorframe with a grin.

“Really?”

“Yeah— I’m a doctor, remember? Steady hands.”

“Right.”

Rose pushes her body away from the doorframe, tilting her head to gesture Luisa back inside with her, and Luisa follows.

The apartment is dimly lit by a lamp in the sitting area, and little else. The television is on and paused a third of the way through _Legally Blonde_. Luisa wants to make a _lawyer joke_ when she sees it, but when she turns back to Rose, who has settled herself back on the couch with a giddy expression, the nail varnish bottle in one hand and the other patting the spot beside her, something soft and warm stops Luisa from speaking.

She sets the bottle down on the coffee table for later, the note beside it, as well as her purse.

As soon as she’s seated on the couch, Rose hands the nail varnish over and stretches far enough down the couch that her foot can rest comfortably in Luisa’s lap. When Luisa looks down at it, Rose wiggles her toes and grins.

“I’m trusting you to make good on your word,” she says, relaxing back into the couch and unpausing the movie.

Luisa huffs and unscrews the top off the varnish.

“I always do.”

 

And, they sit like that, Rose’s feet alternating in Luisa’s lap for a second coat of nail varnish each, until the movie is over.

Luisa hops up at one point to bring glasses back to the couch with them, and Rose slips her legs back over her lap without hesitation once she’s re-seated, having poured drinks for the both of them. The television flickers back to cable and Rose puts a DIY gardening show on in the background, while grabbing for the laptop tucked under the couch. Luisa relaxes back into the cushions, mindlessly trailing her fingers along Rose’s legs where the flannel pyjamas have ridden up to mid-shin.

“So, is that what you were like in law school?” Luisa asks, tilting her head towards Rose.

“Hm?” Rose pokes her head above the top of her laptop. “Oh, no,” she smirks, “I was a total nerd. I spent the summer before I started reading through the entire syllabus so that I’d be prepared. I bought every unnecessary book off the recommended reading list, too, but mainly just to piss my step-mother off with the costs.”

“ _Wow_.”

Rose shrugs her shoulders, and even in flannel pyjamas and her glasses, she perfects _haughty_ without effort. “I was a very committed student, Luisa.”

Luisa rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “I bet you half-assed _some_ things.”

“I don’t half-ass anything. I’m a _full-ass-or-go-home_ kind of girl.”

Luisa snorts and settles back into the couch.

On screen, a woman in overalls is explaining the benefit of certain plants for your back yard’s delicate ecosystem, but Luisa has already tuned out. Just as the heavy-duty gardening equipment is brought on, and the show gets a little interesting, Rose slips her legs out of Luisa’s lap and shimmies down on her knees until she’s sitting beside her.

She drops the laptop carefully onto Luisa’s legs, and folds one arm on top of the couch-back behind Luisa’s head.

“What do you think?” she asks, and Luisa turns distractedly down to the laptop screen.

A browser is open on the webpage for a literature festival in Fort Lauderdale. Luisa scrolls down past the list of authors and events, and then back up to the very top until she sees the dates. “This Saturday?” She turns to look at Rose, who has shifted ever closer so that she, too, can see the screen. She reaches over Luisa and scrolls down the page to a particular event of interest.

“Yeah. I know it’s short notice, but it’s more of a turn-up-on-the-day kind of event than something you need to get tickets for.”

“You want to go?”

“I am going,” Rose says, leaning back against the couch and turning to her. “This is me asking if you want to come with me.”

“Right,” Luisa says, wetting her lips. She turns back to the screen, and she can’t say that she isn’t interested. “Just the two of us?”

Rose looks at her funny. “Yes, just us two. Is that okay?”

“No, I didn’t mean— I mean, yeah, of course it is.” Luisa releases a breathy laugh and shakes her head, like that can dispel the sudden tension in her chest. “Thank you, yes, it looks really interesting.”

“Right?” Rose says, eyes lighting up, and she turns back to the laptop, telling Luisa which specific events that she’s looking forward to, and which others she’d be happy to avoid. Luisa sits back against the couch and listens to her, making the appropriate humming noises when required. “So, give me your phone?”

Luisa blinks. “Hm?”

Rose nods purposefully towards the coffee table, and Luisa figures it’s probably best not to let her know that she’d zoned out through the last five or so minutes. She reaches for her purse and finds her phone inside of it, unlocking it and handing it over to Rose. She watches as Rose creates a new contact for herself, and then sends her phone a quick one-ringer until it buzzes somewhere from across the room.

She hands Luisa her phone back with a smile.

When she sits back against the couch, it’s with a yawn that she hides behind one hand. It brings tears to her eyes.

“Tired?” Luisa asks, smile gentle.

“I was up early this morning,” Rose agrees, delicate fingers poking beneath her glasses to wipe the moisture from her eyes. “I’m up early tomorrow, too.”

“Guess I should get off and let you sleep, then.”

Rose nods her head, though looks somewhat reluctant for it.

Extracting herself from beneath the laptop, Luisa stands and takes their glasses to the sink, rinsing them out. “I’ll get those,” Rose tells her, and Luisa leaves them there to gather up her shoes. “Text me if there’s anything specific you want to see, while we’re there? I’m going to make a schedule so that we don’t miss anything.”

Luisa peers over at her with a smirk, only to find Rose still on the couch, scrolling through the webpage. She walks up behind her and leans her face over her shoulder, better to see the screen. “I’m happy with anything, even a little spontaneity,” she says, brushing a kiss against Rose’s cheek. “Goodnight, I’ll let myself out.”

Rose twists around to see her, and her smile is tired and excited. It makes Luisa’s stomach flip. “Goodnight,” she sing-songs, “get home safely.”

Luisa closes the front door behind her with a laugh.

 

 

“June,” Luisa announces, pushing open the door to the bookshop, “I have a problem.”

The space behind the counter, however, is empty.

“Back here,” a voice calls from the midst of the winding bookshelves, and Luisa follows the sound of distant thudding until she finds June between a half-empty shelf, tossing books into one of many large cardboard boxes. Luisa leans against one of the perilously-stacked shelves and watches her a moment. “Job’ll go quicker if you lend a hand.”

“Sure, pass me one of those boxes.”

“Try to keep them in order?” June asks, passing an empty box over, and Luisa agrees with a nod. “You said you had a problem?”

She’s three books in and a fourth between her hands, when she says, “I think I’m starting to _like_ Rose. Or, she’s starting to _like_ _me_ , and I’m liking the attention that I’m getting from her, so I’m going along with it, but—” She cuts herself off with a sigh and turns to June, bent at the hip and making her way through R – V of the Crime section. “Does this sound stupid?”

“You never sound stupid, Luisa,” June says, dropping three books into a box in order, then wiping a hand to her brow. Luisa smiles despite herself.

“It’s just,” she says, dropping the book that she’s been holding into the box, then picking another at random, “I find it really difficult to understand what I’m feeling for her. When I’m away from her, everything makes sense. I’m not staying in Miami. There are still places I want to see, you know? Things I want to do. But, when I’m _with_ her, that entire plan goes to shit.”

“Because you want to be with her,” June says, and Luisa opens and closes her mouth.

“In the moment? Absolutely. She’s fun, and smart, and hilarious, actually, which is funny in and of itself because she’s such a dork and she can be so awkward and rigid, sometimes, but even that comes from a good place, really—” She cuts herself off, again, wetting her lips. “But, she doesn’t see me like that. We’re only _doing this_ because it’s guaranteed that it isn’t going to go anywhere, it’s safe. No strings, just like she wants. Like _I_ want, I think. Or, maybe I don’t.”

She frowns down at the book in her hands as though forgetting why she’s holding it to begin with. 

“This is what I do, though, I get all caught up in the moment and make something bigger than it is, and usually regret it afterwards. I’ve had a lot of relationships like that in the past. I build them up because in the moment it’s what I want. Then I feel like I need to commit to it, even if it’s not right, which it usually isn’t, because I don’t like hurting people. Then, when it falls apart, I go on a bender and end up back in rehab and my entire life is ruined.”

June frowns at her, shuffling the box that she’s filling further down the aisle. “You’ve had a lot of time to over-think this, huh?”

“Yeah,” Luisa deadpans, “I’ve done a lot of introspection over the past few years. I know what I’m like, I recognise my habits. That’s basically what AA was all about, you know— recognising my triggers and learning how to avoid them.”

“That’s what Rose is, then?”

“Well, no. I don’t know. See, that’s the problem!”

June scratches her head. “Maybe you should get this down on paper, hm?”

Luisa rolls her eyes and goes back to packing up books.

It’s only when her box becomes too heavy to shift by herself that she realises what she’s doing, and stops.

“June,” she says, gaining the older woman’s attention, “where are all these books going?”

June stops her packing to stand with her hands on her hips, and heaves a sigh. She looks around the bookshelves, now half-clear on either side of the aisle, and shakes her head. She looks the kind of sad that’s bone-deep and aching, and Luisa’s stomach knots instantly at the sight. She clutches the book that she’s still holding all the tighter.

“Storage, I imagine,” June says, eventually, a rasp to her voice. “Wherever they’ll fit. Maybe I’ll donate them, I don’t know.”

“You’re closing the store?” Luisa’s heart sinks. “Why?”

June’s smile is wry and wrinkled; she turns back to her packing so that she doesn’t have to face Luisa when she says, “This place brings in just enough to keep itself afloat, but even that’s getting to be a struggle, these past few months. Nobody shops in second-hand bookstores anymore. It’s never been a particularly lucrative business, shall we say?”

“So, where will you go?”

“Oh, I’ll find somewhere, don’t worry about that,” June tells her with a grin that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Now, how about I fix us some tea and you tell me why you’re worrying this old bat with your love life, instead of talking to Rose about your feelings?” June brushes the dust from her hands and looks at Luisa, shaking her head. “I swear, you create problems out of thin air when you’re bored.”

Luisa pouts and follows after her towards the back room.

“Maybe I _will_ talk to Rose,” she mutters, side-stepping around boxes. “She wouldn’t be so mean about it.”

 

 

Rose texts her halfway through the next day, while Luisa is grocery shopping— poorly.

She has a shopping basket filled with bananas, toothpaste, and a novelty dish sponge in the shape of turtle, and has been wandering aimlessly between the aisles in search of inspiration for lunch. When her phone pings, Luisa draws it out from her jean shorts’ pocket and smiles at the sight of Rose’s name. ‘ _Are you busy?_ ’ the text reads.

Luisa writes her back: ‘ _aren’t you working? or does your office have a lock and blinds? I’m thinking you clear the desk before I get there so that nothing valuable gets damaged… ;)_ ’

A reply comes through seconds later. ‘ _Are you ever not thinking about having sex with me?_ ’

‘ _nope, I am forever at the mercy of your sexual allure. it's tragic._ ’

‘ _Flatterer, but not what am I’m after._ ’

Luisa laughs and sends a single sad face in reply.

_‘Later, though_ …’ Rose promises, and the ellipses at the bottom of the screen indicates that she’s still typing. Luisa peruses half of the dairy aisle mindlessly while she waits for her phone to _ding_ again. She picks up and replaces a yoghurt, then picks it up again and puts it in the basket beside her bananas. ‘ _I’m going through the plan for Saturday. Have you got a moment to talk?’_

Luisa writes a quick reply, and then changes her mind and erases it. Rose has mentioned her work in passing, and Luisa remembers it not being that big of a commute. ‘ _are you on your lunch_?’ she asks, and when Rose confirms that she is, probes, ‘ _where are you right now? let’s go through it.’_

Rose sends her the address of a café not too far away – with a cab ride, she could be there in less than ten minutes.

‘ _order me a sandwich or something, I’ll be there in five!’_

 

Eight minutes later, Luisa walks into the café with her phone in hand, ready to give Rose a buzz if she can’t find her.

It’s busy, the queue already extending almost to the entrance, and nary a free table in sight. Luisa frowns into the crowd until she spots a flash of red hair, and waves to get Rose’s attention. As she nears, she realises that she’s not alone. It’s just Rose and Jane, and a table with half-eaten lunches. Luisa gets the distinct impression that she’s interrupting a conversation when she takes the seat beside Rose.

“Hey, good to see you again,” Luisa says to Jane, while Rose tucks her chair in closer. She’s got her laptop on the table and her plate beside it, perilously close to the edge. “I’m not interrupting anything work related, am I?”

“God, no,” Jane groans, cutting into her omelette. “She’s been going on about that book festival all day.”

“You can come, you know?” Rose says, her gaze not leaving her screen. “You can bring Petra, if you want.”

Jane and Luisa make similar noises of amusement.

“Fine, then Luisa and I will go alone, and we’ll have a great time without you.”

She drops a hand to Luisa’s leg as she says it, just above the knee, and flashes her a smile that makes Luisa’s stomach flip.

“Nice shorts,” Rose grins, squeezing her leg until the muscle reflex makes it jolt.

“They are,” Luisa agrees, as a waitress approaches to deposit her sandwich. Luisa thanks her with a distracted smile. “So, what’s happening here? It looks busy,” she asks, taking a bite from her sandwich and turning towards Rose. On the laptop in front of her is a detailed spreadsheet. It takes Luisa a moment to realise that Rose has created an itinerary for the literature festival’s events.

When Rose catches the look on her face, she says, “We won’t have time to do everything, some of the events are happening at the same time, so I’m just trying to prioritise what we actually want to see.”

Luisa makes a noise and swallows what’s in her mouth. “Or we could just turn up on the day and see what looks good?”

“And risk missing something?” Rose asks, shaking her head. She looks uncharacteristically embarrassed when she adds, “I just want to make the most of it,” that Luisa softens and drops her argument for spontaneity.

“Alright, you win.” She eyes the spreadsheet with a wave of intimidation. “I’ll make sure to wear walking shoes.”

“I’ll carry you on my back if you get tired,” Rose coos.

Luisa pokes her tongue out at her.

Across the table, Jane feeds herself another forkful of omelette to keep from making gagging noises at the pair of them. She can’t, however, repress her eye roll— or the beginnings of a warm smile. Her attention is caught suddenly by the vibrating of her phone, and the smile leaves her lips as quickly as it had come. Her expression slips back into a professional veneer at once, so quickly that Luisa has no doubt that this woman has a killer poker face. Jane lifts her phone up to see who’s calling, and groans.

“Who is it?” Rose asks, tentative.

“Pushy client,” Jane tells her, lowering her phone again. “I’ve already told him I’m not taking his case, but he won’t hear it.”

“What’s the case?”

“Tax fraud,” Jane says, and Rose makes a noise of distaste.

She’s about to send the call to voicemail, when Rose offers a hand out to take it.

“Want me to have a word?” she asks, and Jane hands the phone over with an exasperated shrug. Rose clears her throat before she answers the call. “Good afternoon, Jane Ramos’ phone, this is Rose Ruvelle speaking,” she trills, her voice falling into professional charm. There’s a brief pause in which Luisa hears the buzz of a reply on the other end of the line. “Mr. VanderMeer, yes, it _is_ that Rose, how are you?”

There are a number of _aha_ , _mhm_ , _oh, reallys?_ as the client answers.

“She’s not available right now, I’m afraid, but from what you’ve said it sounds like this is urgent and I know that Jane’s got a pretty full schedule right now. You know what? I know _exactly_ the person who can help you, Mr. VanderMeer— no, no, it’s no trouble at all. In fact, how about I send you his details over? Make sure you let him know that I referred you.”

Rose winks across the table at Jane.

“Who’s she giving him to?” Luisa whispers, leaning closer.

“Just some asshole at the office,” Jane tells her. “It’s nothing he doesn’t deserve.”

Luisa turns back to Rose with an amused smile, as the conversation digresses into what sounds like the client’s upcoming vacation plans. There’s something deeply satisfying about listening to Rose on the phone, even if she’s only schmoozing an overbearing customer. She is clipped professionalism, and generous enthusiasm, and just a _hint_ of flirtation that Luisa arches her eyebrows at the girlish laugh that at one point trickles out of Rose’s lips – so different to the laugh that Luisa can draw out of her, with her head tipped back and her face scrunched up, and the breath wheezing out of her between gasps.

“I have to give it to her,” Jane says, pressing closer, just for Luisa to hear, “she knows just how to wrap you around her little finger, when she wants.”

Luisa meets her pointed gaze and swallows.   

Rose wraps the call up quickly.

When she hands the phone back, Jane sits heavily in her chair and tells her, “I love you.”

“I know,” Rose smiles, taking a sip from her drink.

“And, we’d really better finish up and get back before we’re late.”

Rose glances towards the time on her laptop screen and makes a noise of quiet dissatisfaction. When she turns to Luisa, she looks a little guilty. “Sorry for dragging you over here when I have to leave so soon,” she says, and Luisa shakes her head. She’s halfway through her sandwich, but she’s in no rush to leave.

“If anything, you just saved me a table,” she shrugs. “Next time, you could let me know in advance?”

As soon as she says it, Luisa feels her cheeks flush. She’s under no pretension that this will become a regular occurrence, that they’ll become the type of people who see each other in casual, almost _domestic_ situations like this. It won’t turn into a routine. Rose isn’t very good at keeping the surprise from her face, either.

Still, it makes her smile, too brightly for Luisa to regret saying it.

“Sure,” she agrees, “I’ll let you know.”

They wrap their lunch up quickly, and as Jane stands to leave, Rose presses a quick kiss to Luisa’s mouth.

“We did nothing productive today,” Rose tells her, smirking, as she grabs her jacket from over the back of her chair.

“Yeah, you lured me here under false pretences,” Luisa says, and at Rose’s quirked brow, continues, “you just wanted to have lunch with me.”

“Well, it didn’t take much _luring_ , did it?” Rose smiles, saccharine sweet.

“Are you two good to pick this up later,” Jane cuts in, checking her watch, “when we’re not almost late back to work?”

Admonished, Rose dips her head and pulls her jacket on.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll speak to you later,” she tells Luisa, who waves the pair goodbye as they go.

 

 

 

True to form, Rose is exactly on time for her on Saturday morning, and Luisa is barely ten minutes late.

“That’s fine, though,” Rose tells her as Luisa straps in her seatbelt and Rose peels out of the apartment block’s assorted car park, “I factored about an extra fifteen minutes into our schedule, so we’re not technically behind at all.”

Luisa pushes the heart-shaped sunglasses further up her nose.

“You are incorrigible,” she says, and Rose laughs bright and long.

 

 

The drive to Fort Lauderdale is too short to be properly eventful, although Luisa does almost die just the once trying to make a point.

(“If you don’t sing along to _A Thousand Miles_ with me, I’m opening this car door and rolling out right now. You have until the chorus to decide. Your choice.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“This is _my song_ , Rose.” Luisa undoes her seatbelt. “Do you really want to take that chance?”)

The festival is both busier and larger than anticipated, with several tents and pop-up stages in orderly rows, and food and drink stalls dotted in between. Luisa cranes her neck to get a look at the closest gift shop – tucked beneath a smaller gazebo with less of a crowd around it than the others – while Rose draws up the sleeve of her shirt to confirm the time.

“I can’t believe we’re actually early,” she mutters, pulling out her phone to view the copy of their schedule for the day. “The local authors aren’t on until mid-day, and the _World Reading_ is much later. Queer Lit is somewhere around five, but we should get there early; there’s been a huge buzz about it this year and we want good seats.” Rose glances briefly around, glaring against the sun. “I’d say we have about an hour to kill before anything interesting is happening.” She lowers her phone and turns to Luisa. “Would you prefer _New Crime_ or _Supernatural Fiction_?”

“Let’s eat, first,” Luisa says, tugging Rose by the wrist in the direction of a food truck emitting something hot and sweet. “Things like this always make me crave pastry for breakfast.”

Rose takes one look at the food van and her nose wrinkles.

“I don’t need to tell you how far from a balanced diet that is, do I?”

“Nope,” Luisa agrees, swaying their linked hands, “you don’t.”

Three churros and a takeout coffee later, and she’s ready to face the day.

They begin with something easy, seated at the back of a white pop-up gazebo, sharing a bench and Luisa’s churros. They’re seated so closely that their knees are touching, and when Luisa rips off a chunk of pastry with unrivalled enthusiasm, sugar falls like snowflakes across both their legs. It’s hot and the breeze is lacking, and from the back of the gazebo it’s difficult to hear all of what’s happening at the front.

Beside Luisa, Rose turns to her and smiles and says, “I’m glad we did this.”

She reaches forward and brushes sugar from the corner of Luisa’s mouth and it’s only that the action catches her by surprise, but Luisa _blushes_ – feels herself hot and pink with it. She has to choke it off with a churro-faced laugh before she makes it any worse, and by then Rose has turned her attention back to the front of the tent, where someone has begun to read aloud.

“Me, too,” Luisa whispers, bumping their shoulders, when her mouth is clear.

 

 

It’s almost dark by the time they arrive back at the apartment block.

Rose unlocks her apartment door while Luisa stands, shoes in her hand, complaining about her feet. The door opens; Rose holds it out for her, admitting Luisa entrance and turning on a couple of dim lights as she follows. The apartment is warm where the evening sun has been streaming in through the balcony window, and Rose walks towards it now, casting a long shadow behind herself, to open the doors wide and let in what there is of a breeze.

When she turns around, it’s to find Luisa on her back on the couch, one arm thrown dramatically behind her.

“Tired?” she calls, and Luisa makes a noise where she lies. “Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you.” Luisa rubs a finger in the corners of her eyes, careful not to smudge her make up. Once she’s done, she lifts her head up to find Rose, still standing by the balcony, a sea breeze playing with the ends of her hair. She’s maybe the most beautiful thing that Luisa’s ever seen in her life. “Come here,” she tells her, and Rose adheres with a smile.

The couch is wide enough to fit them side by side, but Rose barely considers it.

She slots her body perfectly above Luisa’s, their legs falling side by side of one another, and kisses her. Luisa slips her hands around Rose’s neck, keeping her close, drawing her further in. She opens her mouth and presses her tongue into Rose’s, and sighs when Rose’s presses back to meet her. She tastes like sugar and coffee and whatever generic flavoured balm she uses on her lips.

“Are you staying?” Rose asks, drawing back, holding herself above Luisa on an elbow.

She tucks loose hair behind Luisa’s ear, and Luisa groans and frowns, shakes her head.

“I have a thing.”

“A thing?” Rose asks, her gaze going between both of Luisa’s eyes, marvelling at the different shades of brown that she’d miss, otherwise, if she were any further away. Beneath her, Luisa captures her with a leg and an arm, and rolls until their positions are precariously reversed. When she’s settled above her, Luisa takes both of Rose’s hands and lifts them high over her head, where she cannot touch her. Rose relinquishes her power with a yawn.

“I’d invite you,” Luisa says, “but it’s a brother-sister kind of thing.”

“Ah…” Rose blinks the moisture from her eyes; she does not look upset, but curious. “Then I hope you have fun.”

“Oh, we will,” Luisa swears, so serious that it makes Rose smile. “Even if it kills him, we will.”

 

 

Luisa arrives to a cacophony of noise.

It’s how she remembers the Marbella, and she fits right in – slips in amongst the crowds without detection nor hesitation, like she’s just one bright, shiny fish slipping back in among a shoal of other bright, shiny fish. There’s a band playing in one of the larger function rooms, and the music from within can be heard from the lobby; Luisa lets it guide her through the propped-open double doors, to where a dance floor has been cordoned off between rows of tables and a fully staffed bar.

She’s walking in rhythm to the music when Rafael spots her, and his eyes go comically wide as he realises what she’s doing here.

“Do I have any option to stop what’s about to happen?” he asks, as she takes him by both hands and pulls him non-too-politely away from whatever conversation he’d just been having. Luisa does not spare the men that they leave behind a second glance; the dance floor is filling, and she finds them a prime spot in the centre.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“I think you’re ridiculous,” Rafael counters, spinning her.

Luisa rolls out with a dramatic flick of her arm, missing another guest by inches, and is tugged spinning back in again to Rafael’s chest. She lands there with enough force to almost wind him, were he not built to take it, and sends him a warning glare that scares any further protest right back down his throat.

“You better pay attention, Raf, ‘cause you’re about to learn how to have maximum fun with minimum alcohol, and I’m only gonna teach you this the once.”

Rafael sputters in her face.

His spit goes everywhere, but he’s laughing, so she’ll consider that a victory of sorts.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we have it!
> 
> A short and sweet note, as I'm hot-spotting from my phone's data to post this, but thanks all who've read and left kudos and comments on this fic. It's been a trip. ^^ I'll do a proper read-over this when my wifi has returned from the war, as I'm sure I've left lots of little mistakes dotted throughout this entire chapter. 
> 
> All my thanks, always, to [Ims0s0rry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ims0s0rry) for the encouragement and beta-work throughout. Girl, you're a godsend.

As with most of her decisions, Luisa buys the plane ticket on an impulse.

It’s midnight on the final day of her third week spent in Miami, and Luisa is awake and alone in her bed with nothing for company but the sound of the ocean through the partially ajar bedroom window. Seconds after making her purchase, a new notification is added to the several hundred in her inbox – an email containing her eTicket. Luisa flags it so that it stays on top of her mountain of unread mail, then checks and re-checks the date.

The plane to Algarve departs in three days.

Luisa imagines that will give her time enough to prepare herself – to say her goodbyes – if she decides to go ahead with the plan.

This visit was always meant to be temporary. Luisa was supposed to have a getaway plan, by now. That had been her one condition of returning home – a swift and definitive decision to leave, again, once she had had her fill of familial closeness, of realised (and perhaps unsatisfied) nostalgia.

Luisa had imagined that she’d feel some sense of relief at having met this expectation, but seeing the email flagged at the top of her inbox envelopes her in a sense of strange disquiet. She muses on it a moment longer, until a moment turns into five or maybe ten minutes, and her eyes begin to droop.

Setting her laptop aside, Luisa puts the strange feeling down to exhaustion, and tries to sleep.

 

 

Luisa wakes to the buzzing of her cell phone.

She reaches for it blindly, one hand making a quick and graceless sweep of the bedside table, until she connects with it and launches it over the side. The phone lands with a dull thud beneath the bed, and Luisa takes herself, headfirst and groaning, over the side of it in pursuit. By the time she manages to actually reach her phone, her cheeks are plump and pink from being upside down for so long. She lands heavily back against the pillows and checks her messages.

Rose: _Are you awake?_

It’s the kind of text that would piss her off at having been woken up for, if anybody else had sent it, but Luisa finds herself smiling.

‘ _are you still in bed?_ ’ she writes back in place of a real answer.

The ellipses at the bottom of the message log indicate that Rose is writing a lengthy reply, until it’s a picture message that comes through. Rose is almost lost to the puffy white bed sheets, fresh-faced and freckled and ever so slightly bleary-eyed. Luisa checks the time properly, then, and winces a little at the early hour.

‘ _too many layers_ ,’ Luisa texts, and the next picture message that Rose sends through steals her breath. ‘ _come over. now. i'm unlocking the door_.’

 

Later, when they’re showered and dressed, and the remains of breakfast are left scattered across both the dining room table and the kitchen counter tops, Luisa scrolls through a compiled list of relatively nearby apartments. Over her shoulder, one hand on the back of the chair that Luisa is sitting in, Rose points to the screen and makes a noise for Luisa to stop scrolling.

“This one,” Rose says, tapping the screen. “It’s local, it’s affordable— it’s first floor, but there’s an elevator.”

Luisa flicks through the pictures. “Oh, look at the kitchen.”

“You think she’d like it?” Rose asks, straightening and rubbing the small of her back.

“I think she’d love it, actually. I’ll add it to the list.”

“It’s really sweet of you to help June with this,” Rose says, taking the seat beside Luisa, instead. She smiles across at her when Luisa turns to see her. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were sweet on her.”

Luisa makes a dismissive noise. “I _am_ sweet on her.”

Rose narrows her eyes playfully. “Oh, the things you say to make me jealous…”

Luisa snorts before she can stop herself.

“Okay, this is enough, I think,” she says, copying the URL of the page that she’s on and pasting it into the new email that she has open, addressed to herself and filled with similar URLs to different properties in the surrounding areas. “I doubt we’ll make it through all of these today, but it’s a start. If nothing else, it’ll give her an idea of what she’s looking for, and what she’s not— right?”

Rose makes a noise of agreement, but there’s a strange look on her face.

Luisa follows her gaze to her laptop screen.

“Oh, ignore all that,” she says, embarrassed. “I used to always stay on top of my mail, and then I got the flu this one time, and when I checked them after like two weeks I had about seventy in there and I got overwhelmed. I kinda just stopped reading them, after that.”

She turns back to Rose, but there’s no smile waiting for her, no roll of the eyes or even a look of mock-horror.

Luisa is about to ask her what’s wrong, when Rose says, “You bought a plane ticket?”

She turns to Luisa and Luisa shrinks.

“Oh, that.” She looks back to her emails, at the flagged one at the very top of the list, in particular. “Yeah, I did.”

“Right…” Rose says, sounding distant. Luisa turns to her and Rose clears her throat. “I didn’t think you’d have something in place so soon,” she says, and she does not look happy. She does not look _anything_ , actually, and Luisa scrutinises her face but still can’t place the expression there. Rose has made herself unreadable. “When do you depart?”

“In three days,” Luisa says, toneless, studying Rose’s expression.

It shatters, at that, her eyes widening and searching for Luisa like she’s so much further than the chair beside her.

“ _Three days_?” Rose repeats, and Luisa bites at the skin on the inside of her mouth. Rose is looking at her with something akin to accusation, and it stokes at Luisa’s defences until she’s frowning back at her. Rose always knew that this was a temporary thing, they both _knew_ , and so why Luisa feels heavy with guilt about leaving— “Were you going to tell me?”

“What?” Luisa splutters. “Of course, I was going to tell you.”

Rose looks at her as though to say, _well, you hadn’t_.

“I only just bought the ticket!” Luisa cries, shifting in her chair. She closes the laptop without bothering to exit out of any open programmes. “I told you I wasn’t going to be in Miami forever. It’s not good for me, here, I’m better off when I’m somewhere else. It’s just how things are, okay?”

“I just thought you might have—” Rose cuts herself off with a sigh. “Okay. _Okay_. I need to go, anyway, so…” Rose trails off and looks at her, and Luisa looks away, unable to stomach the look of hurt on her face. Rose has no right to do this to her – she has _no right_. It’s not like they went into this with any promises. Hell, Luisa _warned her_ that this would happen, she doesn’t get to make her feel like an asshole for it. “Good luck with the house hunt, Luisa.”

There’s something final about the way Rose says it, that makes Luisa panic without really knowing why.

She watches Rose gather the light jacket that she’d snuck over in, as well as her purse, and has the sudden urge to stop her.

“Rose,” Luisa calls before she reaches the door, but Rose ignores her.

 

 

 

Luisa is distant throughout the house hunt.

So much so, that it’s only when June brings her out onto the balcony of the current property that they’re viewing, does Luisa realise where they are, and balks. She looks around them, at the Miami skyline, as familiar now as it always has been, and then turns to her companion. “Uh, June,” she says, receiving a distracted hum in response, “no offence, but I think this place might be _way_ out of the price range you gave me to work with.”

June turns to her, then, and smiles. The sun on her wrinkled face makes her look years younger – or maybe it’s just the mischievous look in her eyes.

“Oh, she’s awake,” June tuts, shaking her head. “For a moment, there, I thought you’d been sleepwalking this entire time.”

Luisa rubs the back of her neck, sheepish. “I had a late night,” she mutters, but it’s a weak excuse and they both know it.

June sighs and moves around the balcony to stand beside her, so that they’re both looking out over the city skyscrapers. The world below sounds distant and unreal, like the scene from a movie. Luisa follows the progress of a yellow painted cab until it disappears, then turns her gaze elsewhere, looking for the next distraction.

Beside her, folding her arms on the balcony railing, June hums and asks, “What’s happened?”

Luisa chews the answer reluctantly over before saying, “I bought a plane ticket.” June makes a noise of acknowledgement and Luisa turns to her, expecting the same accusation that Rose had shown her. “It’s one way,” she adds, “to Algarve.”

June arches her eyebrows.

“Never been,” she says. “Sounds nice enough.”

“Yeah,” Luisa agrees, still looking at her suspiciously.

“And, how’d Rose take it?”

Luisa turns her frown back on the city, squinting against the glare of the sun. She should have her sunglasses with her, or at least a hat, and regrets forgetting both of those, now. Her thoughts had been elsewhere, driven to distraction, since the situation at breakfast. It hasn’t improved all day.

“Not well,” Luisa tells the view, the words fighting to come out of her pursed lips. “She was upset… and angry with me, I think. But, she knew I was going to leave one day— _soon_. I always told her, right from the beginning, that I wasn’t planning on staying here. I never once lied about that. She has _no right_ to make me feel like a bad person about this.”

When Luisa has been quiet for a few seconds, June makes a noise that isn’t outright agreement, and Luisa rounds on her in surprise.

“I never once lied to her, June,” she repeats, defensive. “Not once.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” June shrugs, “but that doesn’t mean Rose has no right to be upset about you going.” Luisa takes a deep breath in, ready to argue her point further, but June stops her by speaking first. “I believe you, Luisa, I don’t think you’d mislead her purposefully. But there’s a reason why you feel so guilty about leaving, isn’t there?”

Luisa chews the answer around in her mouth for a moment, not liking the taste of it.

“Yeah,” she says, finally, because she’s never been very good at lying, anyway. “But, that aside, I can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”  
  
Luisa looks at her like maybe June just hasn’t been paying enough attention. “Because,” she says, and struggles herself to comprehend the answer. “Because, I can’t. I don’t want to. That wasn’t the plan— I just need to keep moving.”

“Why?” June prods, again, and Luisa turns away.

She actually considers the answer before speaking, this time.

“Because, if I stay, then it becomes permanent. That means looking for somewhere to live, somewhere to work. Falling back into old circles.” Luisa sighs and shrugs. “It means being back with my family, again, and we always just get along better when I’m not here.” Quietly, as though anticipating June’s next question, Luisa adds, “Because I tend to screw up a good thing whenever I have it. I can’t help it, I’m a magnet for disaster. I bring it on myself without even realising what I’m doing. At this point, I could self-sabotage my entire life in my sleep.”

Luisa looks down at the ground, and they’re not that significant of a height up, but it still makes her feel a little lightheaded.

“If I stay, sure, it might be great. For a month, or two, or six, and then— I know myself too well,” she sighs, and her smile is self-deprecating when she flashes it at June.

“You’re scared,” June says, “because you have a good thing. Your first instinct is to run from it.”

“It’s just safer, that way.”

“Safer?” June shrugs like she isn’t disagreeing, or like she is, Luisa can’t tell. “How long is ‘safer’ going to satisfy you for? You’ve been safe for the past year. You’re young, fun, you _should_ be taking risks. Hell, the trouble I got myself into, when I was your age…” Luisa turns to her, at that, almost intrigued enough to ask for more details.

She makes a mental note to revisit the topic, later.

“It’s new, it’s exciting,” June continues, “and, so what, if it doesn’t work out in the end? But, the last time you brought this up, you weren’t sure where either of you stood with each other. I think it’s safe to say that that’s been cleared up now, yes? You like her, she clearly likes you to be upset by the idea of you leaving. Sure, it could all go to shit from now, but what doesn’t—? At least you’d have given it a try.”

“Maybe,” Luisa agrees. “And maybe it’s kinder to just stop it, now. End it before anyone gets seriously hurt.”

“Could be, yeah, or you could be throwing away something potentially very, very good for you.” June steps away from the balcony with a sigh. “But, don’t listen to me. What do I know, right?” She taps Luisa on the shoulder in something of a comforting gesture. “You’ll figure it out. Maybe not here, though, the realtor’s beginning to look a little concerned with our counselling session.”

Luisa turns to view the woman in question through the glass balcony doors, and snorts.

“Sure, let’s get out of here, this one was a wasted trip, anyway.”

“What?” June stops walking. “You don’t like the place?”

“I like it,” Luisa says, “it’s gorgeous, but it’s not exactly _you_ , is it?”

June barks a laugh.

“I’ll try not to take offence to that,” she grins, sliding the balcony doors open. “But, this one wasn’t for _me_.”

She’s through the door before Luisa can question her.

 

 

Rafael is a different person when he’s at the Marbella.

It’s not that Luisa doesn’t like who he becomes, but the suave, savvy, and often cutthroat business man isn’t her _little brother_ , not how she remembers him. It’s so far removed from the person that he is with _her_ that it unnerves her, sometimes. So, she drags him out that evening, to a seafood restaurant along the sea front, where they both look a little overdressed for the napkins that they have to tuck into their collars, but nobody seems to mind.

“You’re really going, then?” Rafael asks, licking the grease off his thumb.

Luisa makes a noise of agreement. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“I just thought you might have gotten tired of travelling, now that you’ve got it out of your system.”

“Got it out of my system?” Luisa narrows her eyes at him. “I didn’t take a gap year, Raf.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Rafael says, rolling his eyes at her. “Just, that you’ve done it now, you know? Aren’t you tired of constantly being on the move?”

Luisa watches him a moment, wiping her hands on a napkin, and actually thinks about that. Sure, travelling isn’t exactly stress-free, and for all the trouble she’d found herself in, the experience overall had been a good one. She’d recommend anyone do the same – and does, from Rafael, to June, to cashiers at the grocery store. It had been exactly what she’d needed, when she’d first left home.

“It is tiring,” she admits, finally. “But, I still enjoyed it.”

“Sure.” Rafael nods his head, paying more attention to not dropping his shellfish. “You said yourself that it was a relief, not having to worry about plane tickets and hotel bookings... Last time we talked about this, I thought you might end up actually staying for longer. For good, even.”

Luisa stares at him strangely. “What gave you that impression?”

“You know,” Rafael says, gesturing with a hand, “you just seemed more relaxed than I’ve ever seen you. Happier. Do you remember what you told me, back when you first decided to get out of Miami?” Luisa bites her bottom lip and nods her head. She’d been a mess, at the time. Sober, but just about. “You said you were miserable, here. That it reminded you too much of everything that had gone wrong in your life.”

“This is exactly the opposite of a pep talk,” Luisa groans, but Rafael shushes her.

“And I told you that you were running away from your problems,” he says, and Luisa takes a deep breath in, like she wants to argue, but there’s no reason to. “I take it back.” Across from him, Luisa looks at her brother like he’s asked her a trick question. “At the time, I didn’t understand why you had to leave to get better, but seeing you now— obviously, it’s helped.”

“It has,” Luisa says, slowly, cautiously, her eyes narrowing at Rafael. “I didn’t just spend the entire time running from place to place, sightseeing or whatever. I mean, there was plenty of that, sure, but I feel like I did so much work on myself, in that time. I really tried to get better, and it worked.”

“Then why do you need to go back to that?” Rafael asks, and he looks like he genuinely wants to know, not like he’s just assumed the answer for himself and is trying to make Luisa come to the same conclusion as him. “If you’re in a better place, now, why leave?”

“What if it wasn’t enough?” Luisa asks. It’s not that she’s asking Rafael, exactly, but more herself – the world at large, even. “What if I stay and fall back into hold habits? That was the thing about leaving— I really had to trust myself to keep myself safe and know what I was doing. I had to have faith in myself that I could actually do it, and I did. I was forced to, I had no other choice, in that situation. What if not being in that environment means that I just… _lose_ that?”

Rafael takes a sip from his drink and sits a little further back into his chair.

“I don’t think you will,” he says, like it’s just that easy. Luisa would love to believe that it is. “Look at you, now. I mean, we couldn’t have had a conversation like this back before you left Miami, could we?”

Sadly, almost, Luisa shakes her head.

It really is some kind of miracle, she thinks, how close they’ve grown over the last year.

Across from her, Rafael is smiling like he’s thinking the same thing.

“So,” he says, playing with a scrunched-up napkin. “Am I allowed to bring up Rose?”

And, just like that, Luisa’s mood sinks. Rafael holds his hands out like a peace offering.

“I can take that back, if you want,” he says, but Luisa shakes her head.

“No, it’s fine,” she says, somewhat reluctantly. “I actually wanted to talk to you about that.” Rafael looks surprised by that; Luisa’s always known that he’s disapproved of her fling with Rose, so he seems like the wrong person to come to for relationship advice. “She found out that I’m leaving and she didn’t exactly take it well.”

“Okay,” Rafael says, preparing to get into this. “Well, what happened?”

“She kinda just saw the eTicket in my inbox and freaked out.” Rafael winces and Luisa feels herself do the same. “I think she’d actually not mind so much if I didn’t leave Miami. So, _if_ I stay, then that might be something to— I mean, that could be something that I might, you know… _pursue_.”

Across the table, Rafael makes a face.

“Right. You obviously like her, so why was that so difficult for you to say out loud?”

Luisa shoots him a plaintive glare.

“I do like her,” she says, like she almost doesn’t want to admit it. “I like her as a person, and I wouldn’t mind getting closer to her, if that’s what she wanted.”

“But?” Rafael prompts.

“But, you know me,” Luisa says, and she almost laughs it out, but there’s something not quite right about her smile. Rafael is well familiar with it, by now. “You know what I’m like, what I do.” Luisa draws the napkin out from her collar and dabs her mouth with a corner, tossing it back to the table once she’s done. “I rush into things that aren’t good for me, and by the time I realise that there are feelings involved it’s all just one big, huge mess to get out of.”

“Rose isn’t Allison, Lu.”

He says it so gently, and yet Luisa feels her entire body tense at just the mention of her ex-wife.

“No, she’s not,” she agrees. “But Allison was never really the problem, was she?”

Rafael is watching her cautiously, like he’s maybe just stepped on an active mine and they’re both just waiting for it to go off. There’s no easy backtracking out of this topic, but the look on Luisa’s face doesn’t necessarily say that that’s what she wants to do, and so Rafael tries to relax. They’ve only ever openly talked about Luisa’s failed marriage once, and that was during the divorce, when everything was raw, and Luisa was still hurting and desperately mortified by how her life had gone to ruin.

Rafael imagines he might actually get something of an honest conversation out of her, this time.

“I just,” Luisa says, and pauses, fidgets with her fingers. “I don’t think I’m the type of person who’s supposed to have a normal functioning relationship. And, before you even start, I know this sounds all _woe is me_ and I come from so much privilege that I maybe have no right to even _go there_ , but just look back on my life and point out one decent, adult relationship that I’ve ever had.”

Rafael opens his mouth and quickly closes it again.

“Exactly,” Luisa sighs, sinking into her chair.

“You didn’t even give me a chance to think on it.”

“You shouldn’t have to think on it— that’s the point.”

“Well, you’re wrong, anyway,” Rafael says, and Luisa just nods her head like she’d expected him to say that. Surprising her, though, Rafael gestures between the two of them. “What about us? This is the closest we’ve ever been. It’s the best we’ve ever gotten along, anyway. We lost this for a long time, and we don’t always get along great – I definitely don’t always agree with you – but you’re the reason why we’re this close, today.”

“Raf,” Luisa says, making a face, smiling.

“I mean it,” he continues, shrugging. “Even when I’m an ass, you’re there for me. Don’t think I don’t see that. You’re the first person to drop everything and reach out when you think I need it. So, if what you need to do next is to get back out of Miami, then I support you. I trust your judgement. And, if you want to stay,” he says, and Luisa gets the impression that this is his preferred outcome, and she’s surprised by how much that _doesn’t_ surprise her, “then you’ve got my place for as long as you need it, okay?”

Luisa bites her bottom lip and nods.

“You have to promise me that if I stay – _if_ I stay – then we’ll stay like this. We’ll talk properly and honestly about our problems, like we are now.”

Rafael’s smirk is wide and familiar. He nods his head. “Alright, I promise.”

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the most open conversation she’s ever had with her brother (or, maybe she’s just got a full stomach and a soft heart, and she’s never been particularly great at holding onto her emotions), but Luisa feels her eyes well up. She laughs it off, when Rafael notices, and clears her throat.

“I love you, you jerk,” she mutters, running a knuckle just beneath her eyes.

Rafael grins back at her, thinking the same.

 

 

At the end of the night, before it’s too late, Luisa slips onto the balcony of Rafael’s apartment and draws out her phone.

“June,” she says, when the other woman answers her call. “It’s Luisa.”

The conversation runs away from her for the next twenty minutes.

“ _Was there something you needed, by the way?_ ” June asks, eventually, while Luisa leans against the balcony and watches the ocean.

“Yeah, actually,” she says, biting her lip. “That apartment we saw today – the one that wasn’t for you – could we go back? I think I need a second look.”

 

 

Rose avoids her calls.

Luisa’s not entirely sure that she blames her, and yet it’s still frustrating, when Rose sends her to voicemail for the third time that day. Still, it seems wrong to text, and useless to keep on trying when Rose is probably busy at work and obviously doesn’t want to speak to her right now. Luisa’s never been particularly great at taking no for an answer, but she knows where certain boundaries lie, and this is not one to overstep.

She occupies herself for the rest of the day, then.

She and June spend some time together, and once they’re done cleaning out the bookshop, Luisa treats them to dinner. Her muscles are beginning to ache by the time she returns back to Rafael’s apartment (she’d offered to just pay people to clean the bookshop, but June wouldn’t hear of it).

It’s not too late, but Luisa could sleep, if she went to bed.

She’d also probably wake up after three hours feeling disoriented and groggy, and so makes herself drink a glass of water and liven up.

Next door, Rose’s apartment is quiet. It’s not as though she’s a particularly noisy neighbour, though, and so after a moment’s preparation (procrastination), Luisa takes herself out into the corridor. She knocks on Rose’s door and leans against the wall while she waits for an answer. When just enough time has passed that she assumes Rose is out, and prepares to leave, the sound of a chain rattling, and a lock unbolting brings her right back to full attention.

Rose appears from behind the door wearing a pair of pyjamas and a frown.

“Luisa,” she says, like she’s neither surprised that Luisa has turned up, nor is she particularly pleased to see her. “It’s late.”

“I know, sorry.” Luisa steps from foot to foot. “I was hoping that we could talk.”

“Talk?” Something of a smile draws at Rose’s lips, except Luisa wouldn’t call it that. It doesn’t even reach her eyes. “What do we have to talk about?” She shifts in the doorway, not fully opening the door, not admitting Luisa entrance. “I’ve had a busy day, and I’m up early tomorrow. I’d really rather not do this, now.”

She says it quietly, losing bravado, and apparently the ability to look Luisa in the eyes.

“I won’t keep you long,” Luisa presses gently, studying the set of Rose’s jaw. “You can throw me out again whenever you want.”

Rose does look up, at that, and the frown there isn’t so much pissed off as it is uncertain.

“Okay,” she says, finally, stepping backwards and holding the door open for Luisa to pass. She closes it again behind her, while Luisa steps fully into the apartment, and looks around. It’s a habit she can’t stop, even now— her gaze settles on all the little details that single this apartment out as _Rose’s_ , from the new bouquet of yellow flowers on the table, to the books left strewn around, many of which Luisa recognises as ones that she’s recommended to Rose over the past few weeks.

“What did you want to talk about?” Rose asks, folding her arms against her chest, and Luisa turns to see her.

“Can we sit down?” she asks, gesturing to the couches, and Rose nods her head. Luisa takes a seat in one corner of the couch, and Rose takes the other, curling her legs up beside her, keeping a vacant space between them. She watches Luisa expectantly. “I wanted to talk about yesterday— about the plane ticket.” Rose makes a noise like a sigh, full of reluctance. “I probably should have mentioned it.”

“Probably,” Rose agrees, looking away.

Luisa watches her carefully. “You’re annoyed with me,” she surmises, and Rose worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “Is it because I’m leaving, or because I didn’t tell you?”

Rose turns to her, but she seems to struggle with how to answer that question.

Eventually, she admits, “I don’t know. Both.” She runs a hand through her hair, a nervous habit, flicking it away from her face. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? I don’t really have a right to be angry, when you always said that this was going to happen.” After a moment, she turns to Luisa and her smile is so sad, it hurts to look at. “You told me not to get attached, and I did anyway,” she whispers.

Luisa turns quiet.

Inside her chest, her heart is hammering. She almost wants to press a hand to it, tell it, _calm down_. Tell it, _wait_.

“It’s not stupid,” she says, eventually, swallowing. “I’d be some kind of hypocrite, anyway, if I thought that it was.”

“What do you mean?”

Luisa blows out a sigh and shrugs. “I mean, I like you, Rose. I really do. And, I like what we have together,” she says, tentative, like her words are a thin layer of ice beneath her feet and Luisa has to watch where she places every step. “I don’t know who I was kidding, thinking that I could meet somebody like you and have a totally no-strings-attached relationship with you. I’m not very good at not getting attached.”

Rose is watching her strangely, again, the same look on her face that she’d had at breakfast just the day before.

“Me neither,” she agrees. “But, I don’t understand why you’re telling me this. You’re leaving tomorrow.”

And, here’s the moment.

Luisa feels it around her like there’s static in the air, like all of her hair is standing on end, like time stopped moving three seconds ago and the world is thick and sloshy and muffled around her.

“What if I didn’t?” she says, and it shatters something, and time starts moving again.

Rose blinks at her. Her frown is stronger, now, more pronounced.

“What?”

“I could stay,” Luisa whispers. “If I did, would you maybe want to see where this goes?”

Rose opens and closes her mouth. The words are there, and there are many that she wants to say, too many, but she struggles to find purchase in any of them. For a moment, she’s quiet. She looks at Luisa like she’s still comprehending what she’s just said, and when she has, Rose shifts into a partially more attentive position on the couch.

“Are you staying?” she asks, before she’ll answer anything.

Luisa sounds terrified when she admits, “I think I’ve found an apartment.”

Rose nods her head, taking that in.

“Listen,” Luisa says, turning her body toward her, “when I first bought that plane ticket, I hadn’t even fully made my mind up yet that I _was_ going anywhere. It just felt like the thing that I should do. Before I even came back here I told myself that I would, and so I did, but then I _met you_. I never actually thought that I’d— honestly, I’m really nervous about all of this. If I’d never met you, maybe I’d just keep on running, but… I don’t know what I’m running towards anymore. Or, what I’m running from.”

“You must have had a pretty solid idea of what you wanted to do, to buy the ticket in the first place,” Rose says, and Luisa swallows. She nods her head, shrugs. “What made you change your mind?”

Luisa is quiet for a moment, contemplative.

“Lots of things,” she says, finally. “Mainly, because I’m a different person to who I was, when I first left. My reasons for getting out of Miami— they’re no longer valid. The only reason I had to keep travelling was because I’d gotten used to it. That’s what I did. It was familiar, it was safe.” She wets her lips and looks momentarily pained. “And, you know, because facing this is completely terrifying.”

“What is?” Rose prompts.

“This. _Us_.” Luisa gestures between them. “Having feelings for somebody again. I’m just really used to things that I want not working out. The more I want it, the more I tend to screw it up. The last time I really fucked my life up, I had to go travelling for almost a year to get myself in a good place. I don’t want to go through that again. The easiest way to avoid that is to just avoid anything that could potentially lead me back there.”

In the quiet following Luisa’s answer, Rose rests an arm along the back of the couch, and props her head up against it. She looks distracted, like she’s turned her thoughts inward and is busy mulling over the information that Luisa has given her. For her part, Luisa allows her the moment of quiet, and waits for Rose to get her bearings.

When she does, it’s with a determined expression on her face, and a pair of sharp eyes holding Luisa in place where she sits.

“I think I know where you’re coming from,” Rose says, and there is obviously more to come, so Luisa stays quiet. “But, if we’re really going to do this, I need… _more_. I can’t be with somebody who’s going to internalise all of this, and when they decide it’s too much, they buy a plane ticket to God-knows-where without telling me.”

She holds a hand up when Luisa tries to speak.

“I know, it’s not the same, exactly,” Rose continues, and Luisa sinks back into the couch, momentarily appeased. “I’m going to be honest with you, because I feel like you have been with me, and that only seems fair. I really like you, Luisa. I actually can’t remember the last time that I felt like this for somebody. I’m just scared that I’ll wake up one day, and you’ll be gone. If this is going to happen, I need to trust that you’re going to be dependable.”

“I can be dependable,” Luisa says, instantly. “I can do commitment.”

“If we make a go of this, I need to know that you’ll communicate with me. About things like this, especially. But that is what I want.” Rose wets her lips and looks so open and afraid to have actually said that out loud, that Luisa almost crawls into the space beside her. “If you’re serious about staying, and you do have feelings for me that you want to pursue—”

“Yeah,” Luisa interrupts, unable to stop herself. “I do. I am serious about staying.”

“Okay, then I’m in.”

“You are?” Luisa breathes. “Seriously?”

Rose nods her head. “I want to date you, properly.”

Luisa has never been particularly good at hiding what she’s feeling, and less so now, with her splitting smile. She sits up straighter, as though to move, and then hesitates. “Can I kiss you?” she asks, and it finally brings a proper smile to Rose’s face.

“Oh, you’d better, after all of that,” she says, and so Luisa does, again and again _and_ _again_.

 

 

The bookshop is almost perfectly empty when Luisa steps inside.

She finds June in the back, holding her favourite mug, looking into the back of the cupboard where she’d keep her biscuits, if she had any.

“Ready?” Luisa asks with a smile.

She folds her arms and leans against the doorway, while June casts a look around the place, like it’s the last time that she’ll see it. Finally, she nods her head, but it takes her a moment longer to actually find her voice. “I’m ready,” she says, placing the mug inside the final cardboard box filled with things from the little kitchenette. “The new buyer should be here any minute. Grab that box for me, will you?”

Luisa does as she’s asked, and they take the box out to June’s car, where it’s slotted securely into the trunk.

Out on the sidewalk, June checks her watch and then holds a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. She glances down both directions of the sidewalk, like she’s expecting to _just know_ who’s bought the store from her as soon as she lays eyes on them. “Least they could do is arrive on time,” she mutters, and Luisa leans back against the car, casting a leisurely look around.

“You might want to fix your face before they arrive,” Luisa says. “It won’t look good for you to be glaring them down as soon as they roll up.”

June turns to her with a scowl, but Luisa knows she doesn’t mean it.

“I just wish I’d gotten a chance to actually meet them, before it was all finalised. They had the decency to take it at its asking price, at least.”

“And, they’re not kicking you out from the flat upstairs,” Luisa adds. “They said you could even just stay there, if you didn’t want to move.”

“Fat lot of good that’ll do me, if we don’t get along.” June turns her back to the store, facing Luisa. Her expression hasn’t improved any from her scowl. “I said I’ll only stay long enough to make sure that they’re doing right with the place. Not that I’ll have any say in what they _do_ get up to, but I owe it that much.”

Luisa shrugs in agreement.

“Either way, there’s no use in getting yourself worked up over it, is there?” She pushes herself away from the car and puts both hands on June’s shoulders, until she can turn her back around, facing the open store window. Inside, the shop looks dark and barren. “Just picture this for a moment, will you? Whoever’s bought this place has spent enough time inside your bookstore to know how special it is. In fact, they want to go a step further – really diversify the books available, keep them affordable, give the place a fresh lick of paint to draw in some new crowds, even.”

Luisa hums in thought.

“I’m thinking a mint green,” she says, because she can’t not see the colour and think of June. “What do you think?”

And, just like that, June’s shoulders tense.

She turns around slowly, from the shop front to Luisa’s almost-guilty smiling face.

“You didn’t,” she gasps, because it’s very obvious that Luisa _did_.

“Are you mad?” Luisa asks, wincing.

June’s expression becomes unreadable. For a moment, Luisa genuinely has no idea what to expect, or whether or not she’s upset June, and then June releases a shuddering breath and— she’s hugging her. Tightly. Both arms around Luisa’s shoulder, pulling her down, holding her close. “You’re a real piece of work,” she says, somewhere by Luisa’s ear, muffled by her hair. She sounds like she might be crying, but when June draws away, again, she makes a quick show of wiping her eyes.

“It just felt like the right thing to do,” Luisa says, turning back towards the store. “And, of course, you’re super welcome to just stay upstairs for however long you want to. There’s no rush on you moving out, okay? I just… hated to see this place close down. Or, worse, turn into some hipster vintage clothes shop like every other store on this street.” She turns to June, suddenly serious. “But I’m only going to go ahead with this if you’re definitely okay with it. I don’t want to make anything weird.”

“Luisa,” June says, and she’s grinning, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t want anybody else to have it.”

 

 

Luisa watches the storm from the closed balcony door of her fifth-storey apartment.

Rain batters the window panes, turning the cityscape into a murky blur of stone and steel – greys and blues and blacks than turn occasionally silver in the strike of a lightning bolt. When the sky dims, again, it’s to reveal her frowning face in the reflection of the balcony door, and Rose’s smirk from over her shoulder just before a kiss is pressed against her cheek.

“Don’t pout,” Rose murmurs against her ear.

“I’ll pout if I want,” Luisa returns, unfolding her arms and turning to face her. “This was not supposed to happen today.”

“You knew the forecast,” Rose says, unnecessarily straightening the already straight collar of Luisa’s dress. “Why you insisted on your first book club meeting being _today_ , of all days…”

Luisa frowns and bats her hands away. “I’d already printed fliers.”

“Then, we’ll print more.”

Luisa makes a noise of reluctant agreement, her shoulders sagging. It’s not that the date can’t move, of course, and Rose is entirely too correct in the fact that they’d all known about the storm’s approach before it had hit. Still, a part of Luisa had kept her fingers crossed that it might just miss them at the last minute, but when has the universe ever bent to her favour?

“I was so ready for it, though,” she says, following Rose into the kitchen, where ingredients are pulled out in preparation for dinner. Luisa takes a seat at the breakfast bar, watching Rose wash her hands at the sink. She hasn’t said it out loud, yet, but she loves the simple domesticity of nights like this, when Rose invites herself over for dinner.

More often, these days, Luisa is the one asking _her_ to stay, and Rose’s will is never iron clad when faced with Luisa’s smiling persuasion.

“I know, baby,” Rose says, distracted, drying her hands. She turns to survey the ingredients laid out across the counter, but instead her gaze settles on Luisa, slumped over the breakfast bar with her head in her hands, lazily watching her. With a sigh, Rose rolls her eyes and steps closer, until they’re facing one another. “Would you like to help me make dinner?”

“I’m not that hungry,” Luisa mutters, words muffled slightly from where her hand is partially covering one corner of her mouth.

Rose bites her bottom lip and taps her fingers against the counter, thinking.

“Would you like to make something else?”

When Luisa looks up, intrigued, Rose makes a show of slowly popping the very top button in her blouse open.

“I’m listening,” Luisa says, sitting up straighter. When Rose moves around the counter, Luisa gladly readjusts her position on the stool so that she can fit snugly between her legs. Rose’s hands are drawn to her thighs, where the skirt that Luisa is wearing has ridden up an indecent amount. “You always know just what to say, don’t you?”

“Comes with the job,” Rose grins, and leans in for a kiss. Before she reaches Luisa’s lips, however, she hesitates and draws slightly back. “I’m sorry that today didn’t work out,” she says, brushing her thumbs back and forth against Luisa’s thighs. “We can put up new fliers. For the same time next week, maybe?”

“Next week sounds good,” Luisa nods, and closes the distance between them.

 

 

Later, when dinner has been eaten and cleared just as efficiently away, Luisa lies across a couch with her head in Rose’s lap.

Above her, Rose reads aloud from her kindle, one hand keeping the device aloft and the other playing with Luisa’s hair. The wind has calmed down, outside, no longer shaking the very foundations of the apartment building, and the rain is a steady drone against the windows. Several times, Luisa has almost fallen asleep already, but each time she does Rose’s reading will stop.

“Keep going,” Luisa says the next time that it happens, her words slurred, and it’s a struggle for her to open her eyes again. When she does, it’s to see Rose watching her, her glasses illuminated by the bright screen of her kindle. “I’m not even sleepy.”

“You’re so bad at lying,” Rose sighs, shaking her head, but she lets the kindle’s screen dim and sets it to one side. Still in her lap, Luisa reaches a hand up to gently remove the glasses from the bridge of Rose’s nose. “Ready for bed?” Rose asks, looking as soft and tired as Luisa feels in this moment, and impossibly inviting.

The sight of her steals Luisa’s breath away, sometimes, in the quiet moments like this when she seems to really realise what she has.

Luisa would never call her life perfect, if only to keep from tempting fate.

Still, it’s come pretty damn close to it in these last few months.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling. Rose is smiling, too. “I’m ready.”

 


End file.
